The Forgotten Tree
by twopoint
Summary: The vines belonged to Glorfindel and he would keep them safe. Gondolin to Rivendell - Glorfindel and Erestor's story hitherto edited by Pengologh.
1. The Vines

Summary: Generally encompassing the entirety of Tolkien's canon, from Gondolin to Rivendell.  
Warnings: Oh, there will be angst. And slash. And other things.  
Notes: Brewing for five years in notebooks, this story will turn to vinegar if it sits any longer.

**The Forgotten Tree**

The Vineyard

He was not allowed alone into the forests. Not then. Not without his father's guard. But he was allowed to roam the vineyards. The vines belonged to Glorfindel and he would keep them safe.

The forest was not unsafe, the writhing snake-sheened dangers did not slip past Turgon's guard nor the massive rocky slopes of the mountains encircling the city of Gondolin. The city and the forests were safely kept by stony fortresses, but there were other things, not exactly dangerous things, but curious things; things that might tempt one as young as Erestor to wonder about the world beyond the safety of the mountains.

Erestor, hidden beneath the tangled vines, rested on the sun warmed ground and watched the sky move between the quiet leaves. He smelled the summer rich and ripened fruit. He imagined that he hid, instead, in the forest. He did this often when the king's libraries threatened to swallow him. He loved words as much as he loved Glorfindel's vineyards, but fruit did not make choices – none that he could hear or see. Words, however, tumbled like a violent sea, from what he'd read of seas, and too many hours spent with them made Erestor quick-tongued, snappish.

He could not fathom how all the ones that came before them could not see the tragic endings to their stories. Erestor had not found a single happy ending: not in the king's archives, not in his father's house, not in Glorfindel's libraries nor any of the vast, carefully copied volumes in any house in the city. He'd read them all. He peered over the shoulders of scholars and scribes hoping some wisdom would appear on the new pages. It never did. And now here they all were, the wars and battles and oaths and darkness kept away by the mountains. Erestor plucked a grape and ate it.

The trellis stakes were golden in color, topped by the seal of the Golden Flower. Soon the harvest would come, the fruit cut free by a golden knife. Glorfindel was not the only winemaker in the city, but he was the best. His grapes held the memory of the past. Like Erestor's father and mother, Glorfindel was born and lived for some time in their forsaken homeland, Valinor, and there were no roads leading back to that place. Glorfindel's wine tasted of sunlight and longing and just a little sadness. Erestor's mother often poured him a small cup on the rare days the oldest vintages were served. She did this, she said, so that Erestor would take the memories into his blood and carry them always within his heart.

Erestor ate another grape and wondered how the wine went from fruit to mystery, just as stories went from mouth to ink. Erestor's hands were stained black from his pen. His mother, he thought, was mistaken. He did not wish to cross the mountains into sadness. He wished to stay right here in the late summer vine's shadow; the distant city sounds safe behind the wide, encircling walls; the braided bells of grazing horses chiming in the pasture; his bare feet placed on known ground.

He wished to remain in the place where he could hear the quiet sound of Glorfindel's boots approaching. Like that. Vines were not meant for hiding, not like forests. The evening hour would soon be sung out from the city towers.

"There you are," Glorfindel said, his golden hair brushing the stony dirt as he peered down through the vines. He sat down beside Erestor.

Erestor glanced quickly toward him, then back to the sky.

"Your mother asked me to find you."

"You can tell her that I could not be found. Which is true – I am not in a place where I wish to be discovered."

Glorfindel laughed. His smile was like his wine. "I'm no messenger. It's very likely that I would twist your words, become distracted and fail my mission entirely. Also, no one can deceive you mother."

Erestor turned onto his elbows so he could look out toward the city, "That's true. How are the preparations?"

"Never ending. I haven't seen your father in days."

"Nor I."

Very soon Turgon's army would cross the mountains and leave all who remained in the city to wait for falcon-word and unreliable visions in clear pools. Erestor was not old enough to remember the last time that happened. If he thought of it too long he felt indiscernibly bruised and tired, as if he'd read too many violent stories.

Turgon's brother, Fingon, ruled the lands south of Gondolin. The brothers were of two minds when it came to protection. Fingon's followers were constantly in flux, roaming from the Teleri regions on the temperate shores to the unknown and wild eastern forests. Turgon's remote city was built in secret, inaccessible without a guide. The noble houses in the city were carefully chosen for their loyalty and obedience to Turgon's wishes.

In secret, Turgon planned to send a force to aid his brother and their cousins. Erestor's father, Glorfindel and all the other lords would ride out in two days time.

The evening song spread lowly through the valley. Erestor turned his gaze back to Glorfindel. When the frost glistened in the pastures, Erestor would come into his title. They city would seem empty then.

"You will miss the harvest," Erestor said.

"I will be back for the next if all goes well. Will you keep records for me?" Glorfindel's records noted all the usual facts: yields, moon phases, rainfall, temperatures. But he also tallied the immeasurable: the moods of harvesters, notable dreams, his favorite mare's hoof growth. Erestor contemplated the task and Glorfindel continued, "Your father, I'm certain, is leaving you with enough work."

His father, Echthelion of the Fountain, had left Erestor with nothing yet, save asking him to keep a close eye on the stables and begging him to take his place in the autumn hunts.

"No," Erestor said, "he hasn't. I would like to keep records for you."

"You have the key?" meaning the keys to all of Glorfindel's libraries and offices.

"I know where father keeps them."

Glorfindel was dressed informally for the day's work. His golden hair, rare in Gondolin, escaped the tie at his neck. Erestor seldom saw him disheveled except when there were young horses to persuade or the harvest day was ended. He waited for Glorfindel to look at him, but he did not. Glorfindel was most beloved of all the lords in Gondolin. His kindness often made him seem quite young. Erestor watched him measure the vines with his bright knowledge. The sun seemed huge at the mountain crest.

"I've left a gift for you. You will find it when you come into your title. And there is also this," Glorfindel's voice was always a moment from laughter, but his tone became grave, "if I do not return I've made arrangements for everything to go to you – the house, my title, the vineyard. You are not much younger than I was when my father died. I have not married and my cousins are scattered, most never left Valinor. I have known you since your birth and I believe that you are smarter than I and you will take great care of the duties that have been left to me. If your father returns he can see to your house and you will be free to see to mine. If Echthelion is lost, we would like for you to govern both."

"I do not want to consider either of those fates."

"But you must. Your father is my dearest friend; he agrees with my wishes, and there is no one in the city who would argue. It is natural that the houses would become one."

"True, but you will both return, so there is no need for us to discuss this."

Glorfindel sighed, "Erestor, your father and I both found ourselves alone before we knew what our duty was. We were unprepared and lost. We want more for you."

"You've seen my skill with the sword."

"Your gift is strategy."

Erestor sat up and regarded Glorfindel squarely, "Did father ask you to tell me all this?"

The seriousness quickly fled from Glorfindel's demeanor. He seemed again mischievous, the friend Erestor always remembered, not the messenger of doom, a poor roll, "In a way he did ask me to talk to you. It is difficult for him to part with you. Will you promise me then to love these vines and keep them happy until I return to them?"

"Of course I will."

"Good. Then come with me and have a glass of my favorite wine before Turgon and your mother force us back into the city."

It had always been this way between them, like water meeting water, finding the source. Erestor followed Glorfindel to the small stone storehouse. There was a time when he would have to quicken his step to match Glorfindel's but they were now of an equal height, though Glorfindel's wandering gait caused Erestor to pause as they moved along the rocky ground. The bright lord surveyed the trellised slope, the summer rich grasses stretching like a richly woven tapestry toward the city walls.

Echtelion's house was known for their gift with music, for the way stories spilled from them like silver light. Erestor understood music and he also sensed its truth. This characteristic was a blessing when the notes were lovely and frustrating when they were false. The poor spirit chosen to call the evening song across the valley was new to his task. Erestor cringed as the final notes covered the hillside.

Glorfindel noticed Erestor's distaste as he held the storehouse door for him to enter, "Do you not like Beldon's singing? He's tried every occupation Maeglin's secured for him. I'm afraid this was the last."

"Did the Fountain lose a bet with the Moles?"

"Be kind, not everyone has your voice."

"And those that cannot sing well usually choose to not sing in public. Has he nothing else to do? I thought he was busy following after Idril," Erestor pulled the heavy door shut.

"I think she's absolved him of that task. When we are gone I want you to watch Beldon closely. Discover where he goes in the evening, but be kind and do not let them know you are watching."

"Maeglin will stay here?"

"Turgon asked and Maeglin refused. The Moles go with us, all of them except Beldon."

The storehouse was very cool inside and damp. The high windows were too small to burn away the moisture from the rock walls. Over the years Erestor had been told a story to mark every stone cut and placed to form the dark room. The beauty of Glorfindel's house in the city was remarked upon by all but it was this rough structure on the hillside that held Glorfindel's pride. The thick casks along the walls seemed to murmur their stories like Glorfindel's obscure harvest ledgers.

After hiding too long in the warm sun, the storehouse chill passed through Erestor and he trembled. Cold rarely touched him, or any of their kind. Instinctively Erestor touched his forehead to ward away any portent. _We create own doom_, he thought, _we pull our tragedies toward us._ Instead he forced his thoughts toward the sunlight, like Glorfindel's hair in the dim shadows of the room, and he pulled together a picture of Glorfindel and Echthelion returning, as if the image would create its own outcome.

Glorfindel busied himself with a small, dusty cask in the corner of the room. The glasses he chose were unembellished, so fragile it seemed the air would snap them. Erestor's ink stained fingers felt clumsy against the delicate glass as he took the portion that Glorfindel offered.

The golden liquid matched the color of Glorfindel's ring, the only adornment on him, crafted in a forgotten time. The bright jewel at the ring's center was said to be fashioned from the light of the sun when the sun was newly made, blinding in its brilliance as it reached the shoreline of Valinor.

"This is the last of its vintage," Glorfindel said quietly. "Close your eyes and taste it."

Erestor looked at him curiously but eventually did as he was told. The glass against his mouth was cold but the wine, hardly on his lips, was warm. He took the smallest sip at first and the warmth seemed to cover him. The wine was like no other he had tasted before. There was sunlight in it, and many other things – the new leaves of spring, the first leaves before leaves were named. There was sweetness to it, but not cloying like the honeyed drinks served at harvest time. This sweetness was like kindness, unexpected and painful for its rarity. In his mind Erestor saw the tree from where this sweetness came. He saw the spring that fed the tree. He saw the source, and it was beautiful and it was right and it could never be created again.

And that was just the first sip.

There were only a few sips left in the glass; soon the wine would be finished. With his eyes shut to the broken world Erestor saw all that his family left as they fled their old homeland. He saw the spirits that drove them. He thought he saw his father.

And then he saw blood. Erestor had never seen so much blood, the once clear stream beneath the tree ran red with it. The stream became a bloody shore and burning ships. A body hung from the tree and ravens sat on the massive, winding roots, beaks open to collect the blood that dripped from the body. Erestor knew, just as he knew the falseness of discordant notes, that the tree and the body and the water created a memory of the first murder.

One sip left, Erestor drank quickly to be done with the blood, but as the warmth filled him he wished that it would never end. The carnage was gone; the sunlight was back. It made him long for things he could not name or see, one thing, the most important thing. Whatever it was, it made the tree grow and it fed the wide stream at its roots. He tasted the root of Glorfindel's wine like the first water before water was named. And he saw that the world was changed by words but that words made the world so.

For hours it seemed that he stood there in the storehouse tasting a wine whose flavor would remain with him through every path he would travel. So when Erestor opened his eyes he was confused to find the shadows hardly changed across the cool, stone floor.

Glorfindel smiled and touched their glasses together, the sound perfect, a small bell, "May this be the last sad farewell for all of us," he said and swallowed the last sip.

Erestor peered into his glass as if he would find some answer there. He felt awkward, oddly at a loss for words. His eyes felt heavy as if he'd lost himself in the libraries and forgot to find sleep, or that he must close his eyes again to comprehend the images fully.

Finally, his tongue worked, "I could not write that, ever. It can't be sung. What was it?"

Glorfindel placed his glass on the table and did the same with Erestor's, all the while considering his answer. His blue eyes seemed touched by the same madness that weighted Erestor's, "It is the only thing that matters."

Erestor leaned against the sweating stone wall, "And the blood?"

"I have never seen it but your father mentioned a bloodied scene when he tasted the wine years ago."

"I saw a murdered body hanging from a massive tree beside a shoreline."

"Is that all that you saw?"

"No. There were other things."

"Horrible things?"

Erestor pressed his hands against the cool stone behind him, "Beautiful things."

"Good, then remember them all. I do not know how it works. I brought the wine with me from Valinor. My horse was much burdened by the weight and never let me forget it – her children carry the same spite, as they carry other things. Keep a record of it all, Erestor."

Records. Lists. Stories. Words. Erestor would keep them all throughout his long life. There were many other things that he and Glorfindel discussed on their slow walk back to Gondolin that evening. But later that week as Erestor watched Turgon's host ride out across the vale of Tumladen, he realized that he had never seen blood before the vision in Glorfindel's storehouse, and he wondered at the brightness that they carried within them.

Erestor watched until the Encircling Mountains swallowed the shadows of Glorfindel and Echthelion's horses. He watched until the valley was empty of all but grass. He watched until night stole the color from the cliffs. And when the stars had shifted, Erestor turned back toward the empty city with the feeling that he must study patience, that he must learn the act of waiting like a never ending ballad composed to fill the space between the grass and night sky.


	2. Ondolindë

Many thanks to the wonderful Levade for beta duties.

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Forgotten Tree

Chapter 2: Ondolindë

For fifty-two years Turgon, son of Fingolfin, and his lords constructed a city on a rise within the vale of Tumladen. Few cities in the long history of the world compared to its beauty. The rocks were quarried and placed brick by brick, steadily upward, by the hands of ancient craftsmen. The city was held within the heart of the mountains. The mountains protected Gondolin and shielded it from all eyes, save from the eagles who loved it. Many descriptions have been given of the streets and fountains and pools within the high walls of Gondolin. By that and other names was Turgon's city called.

Every morning for weeks Erestor counted the steps leading down from the city, four hundred thirty-two in all, and spent some hours completing mundane and unnecessary tasks in the Fountain stables. The main Houses built their stables, fine as their city dwellings, at the base of Gondolin near the stairway leading up to the Main gate.

Never had the stables seemed so empty. Only the very young and the very old horses remained, their numbers taking up only the front stalls in the vast length of the stables.

Erestor's own mount, since the time Ecthelion first lifted him onto the back of a horse, was a patient and aged hunter named Itimo. The horse's acquisition was the source of numerous myths and legends. The most authentic of which, in Erestor's opinion, being that Itimo joined the small herd of Turgon's scouts as they secretly brought the inhabitants of Gondolin from their old home in Nevrast. The horse became Ecthelion's the morning the lord awoke to find the thing rooting around in his tent. Erestor believed the tent story wholeheartedly. Itimo was mischievous in the best of times, and it was highly likely that the horse had simply been dumped in Ecthelion's service by another lord exasperated by the horse's thieving.

"What did Itimo steal in the night?" Erestor asked as he entered the stable.

"Good morning, Erestor." The head horse keeper leaned in a patch of sunlight against the stable's high stone wall, "Itimo spent the night in the fields and came for his breakfast this morning with an empty mouth. I have not searched his stall."

"I'll start there unless you have something else for me." Erestor knew as well as the horse keeper that there was little for him to do in the well-ran stables when they were full. Reduced to a fraction of their numbers, the tasks meted out to Erestor served no other purpose than to keep his hands busy.

Itimo switched his tail as Erestor neared his stall. The horse had been fully black at one time, but grey hairs collected in patches at the points of his face, giving the impression that Itimo was considering his next feat with narrowed eyes and pinched nostrils. His unadorned forelock, thick and gleaming, fell in tangled waves across his face. The old stallion seemed to carry the secret shadows of night with him, even when his taxed joints creaked. He shifted to the side of the stall and lowered his nose to watch Erestor move the straw bedding around with his boot.

Erestor spoke as he worked, "If you spent the night out, you must have arrived home with some prize. Where is it?"

The horse busied himself by licking the wall.

"Here we are," Erestor pulled a piece of fabric from the straw. "What is this?"

The scarf was finely made, stitched in golden thread, and last seen on the head of Turgon's daughter, Idril. Erestor presented his evidence to Itimo's nostril. The horse nipped a loose corner thread in response.

"I've read every case brought before Turgon since the city was founded: misunderstandings, property disputes, foreshadowed marriages. You, horse," Erestor leaned against his shoulder, "are the only conclusive example we have of a thief. I've heard it's a way of life in some parts of the world, but not here. You mock the sincerity of our House."

Itamo stretched his neck to look back at Erestor, effectually trapping the young elf in an embrace which was the equestrian equivalent of guilelessness.

Erestor sighed and ducked away from the warm curve of Itimo's great neck, "You can no longer climb stairs, so I'll return your loot. And tomorrow we'll ride together and scout the vale for new sources of mischief." Erestor tied the scarf around his own loose hair that fell down his back in tangled black waves, like Itimo's forelock. He pressed his palm to the warm, flat space between Itimo's eyes in farewell.

Erestor counted the stairs, four hundred thirty-two, up and up into the city.

He traced Idril to her usual late morning haunt along the eastern walls behind the Great Market. Again, Erestor climbed up toward the tall city watches by the angled slopes of the inner stairway. Idril stood with her back to Erestor, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She looked out across the bright summer grass and the tall mountain peaks, but it seemed that she gazed upon the landscape of a different place.

"I found this," Erestor said, working the knotted scarf from his hair. Once free, the wind blew his hair across his face.

Idril laughed, "You seem to need it more than me." She looked closely at the fabric in his outstretched hand, "I lost this scarf last summer."

"Good, I'm relieved. I feared my horse took it from your head when you passed him in the fields."

"Not this time. Let me see it," Idril held the scarf up and the wind unfurled it like a banner. The golden threads gleamed in the late morning sunlight. Idril turned the scarf this way and that, letting the breeze carry it, until, purposefully, she let the fabric drop from her hands.

They watched the scarf descend, slowly downward past the wall until it caught on the sharp edge of a guard house roof at the base of the city.

"Strange," Idril said.

"I didn't return it for you to lose it again so quickly."

Idril shook her head, "Someone's hand has been on it."

"What do you mean?" Erestor sat on the closest bench and motioned for Idril to do the same beside him.

"The city seems lighter with everyone gone."

"The city seems desolate," Erestor amended. "Whose hand touched the scarf?"

"I have a suspicion, nothing more. You know how word flies through this city. We've nothing else to do than tell stories. . ." she sat beside Erestor, but still kept watch on the mountains, her voice trailed off, " . . .until now."

"You can trust me with your secrets."

"Of course I can," Idril turned her attention to him and pulled him close, gathered back his thick hair. "as you can trust me with yours. What secrets do you have for me today, Erestor? I've not forgotten the significance of tomorrow. What do you wish for the day?"

Tomorrow – Midsummer – was the day that marked Erestor's majority. A title seemed insignificant when more than half of Gondolin's numbers faced many evils in Thangorodrim. Erestor thought very hard about what he wanted. It went without saying that he wished for the Noldor armies to achieve quick victory. He wished for everyone that he loved, and some that he did not, to return to Gondolin safely and quickly. Erestor believed that Idril could do many things, but even she had a limit.

"I wish for you to tell me a story, so that I might write it down and keep it. I want a story, anything, however trivial, about my father and Glorfindel before they arrived here in Gondolin. Before the city was built."

"Shouldn't they tell you their own stories when they arrive safely home?"

"They should, but stories sound better from another's mouth," Erestor considered his reasons and continued, "and they rarely talk about the past, my father especially, in fear that I will want to leave the city in search of my own adventures. Glorfindel abides by Ada's wishes, most of the time."

Idril searched his face and smiled. "Your request is fair. Visit me tomorrow night – I'll meet you in the small, palace garden. Thank you for finding my scarf."

"For you to quickly lose it again."

"Some things like to remain unfound." Idril tugged a strand of Erestor's hair as she stood.

Erestor watched her bare feet move against the warm stone walkway until she disappeared down the stair.

When Thorondor or one of his eagles flew down from the high places and circled the city, they brushed the walls of Gondolin with their long feathers as they passed and often came to rest at the top of one of the high, richly carved arches that spanned the Main and Northern gates into the city. The sound of the wind rushing against the eagle's wings was like the thick roar of a quick summer storm, and one of Erestor's earliest memories.

He heard feathers brush the wall as he made his way into his mother's garden. The Fountain properties were positioned in the southern section of the city, along the Way of Running Waters. Ecthelion's house was built against the southern wall, its courtyard, in the height of midsummer growth, like a forest.

It was the eve of Tarnin Austa, but there would be no celebration this year. The city planned to observe the usual silence from sundown to dawn, but with Turgon's army traveling toward an uncertain battle the ritual was a greater echo of the silence that already filled the city.

Erestor's mother, known to all as Alda, the city's Alda, their deeply-rooted seer and healer, gathered wild rosehips in a bright corner of the garden. Erestor sat beneath a small tree and waited for her notice. A heavy breeze swooped down from the high wall, catching the varied leaves in gusts. Another eagle passed, touching the city wall just below the house.

Alda was dressed that day in traveling clothes, the rougher fabrics, pants and tunic, she wore to ride across the vale in search of herbs and roots not found within the city. Erestor watched the familiar curve of her back as she bent to whisper and cut, selecting each rosehip by touch and intuition. Alda's black hair fell forward over her shoulder and tangled in the twining branches of the plants.

"The eagles are very busy today," she said without pausing in her work.

"What are they saying?" Erestor stood and peered upward, trying to see the shadow of Thorondor on top of the distant Main gate.

"Nothing yet, but they feel that something will happen soon."

"Where will you be tonight?" Erestor asked.

"I thought to stay in the house. Will you keep me company?" She sliced one last rosehip, wrapped it up with the others and came to stand near Erestor beneath the tree.

They stared at each other, identical expressions of thoughtful consideration on their faces. Erestor was taller than his mother, but not by much, and he could not abandon the feeling that Alda's wisdom gave her height, that she stared down at him in the rare instances when something remained unspoken between them.

"You're anxious," Erestor said.

The stillness passed and the wind seemed to move the trees again. They no longer seemed like carvings from the same dark rock; Erestor became Erestor, and Alda became Alda.

"I am," she said and passed him the package of rosehips. "Someone should be with them that knows how to stop the flow of blood. In their haste to fight a battle, the lords forget their healers until they're in need of one."

"They forgot to pack you? Is that what troubles you?" Erestor smiled.

Alda frowned. "What use am I in the city?" She moved toward the interior of the house. Erestor followed. Alda's great hound lifted herself from the shadows beneath a bench and lumbered after them.

"I need you to be here," Erestor said.

Alda glanced back at him "I haven't seen you in many days."

"Glorfindel's harvest," he reminded her.

"They'll be back before the harvest. They will be back before the next full moon."

"How do you know some things and not all things?" Erestor felt the hound's hot breath against his calf. The dog was his mother's sentry.

She removed the tie from her hair and picked the twigs out of the strands. Erestor waited for her response. Nothing came. The dark, stony shadows of the interior were a cool reprieve from the bright midday sun.

"Shall I rephrase my question?" He tried again. "Will Ada and Glorfindel survive and return with the others?"

His mother already wandered toward her rooms, but her voice carried, lowly, down the hallway, "They will live – but things will never be the same."

Erestor and the hound glanced at each other before watching Alda's retreating form vanish into the dark shadows. Erestor's long fingers trailed against the hound's coat as she passed him to follow her mistress.

With too much time to waste until sundown Erestor was too restless and decided to cross the city to see how the hours moved for the remaining inhabitants of the Golden Flower.

Erestor was accomplished at a great many things, patience not amongst them. Waiting in the empty city was a new form of anguish for him. He announced himself at Glorfindel's house, which made the guard look at him curiously. Erestor usually just entered and went about his business. He waited in the entrance hall for Galor, Glorfindel's advisor, to find him.

"Erestor," Galor said as he entered, "I haven't seen you since morning. Did you come with word from your mother?"

"She did say something – I'm not certain what she meant. Will you give me a task?"

There was a kindness to Galor, a genuineness that set him apart from all the others of his rank in Gondolin. He moved with fluid ease, like Glorfindel, as if his duties never touched him. After the oppressive weight of Alda's presence, Galor's smile made Erestor feel as if nothing in the city had changed, save its silence.

Galor's hair was brown, like oak bark, and his eyes a curious, crystalline blue, the color that characterized so many in the Golden Flower. "Come with me," he said, "I found a partial scroll in the library."

Glorfindel's library was cluttered and well loved. The original inhabitants of Gondolin brought with them what little they could carry over the treacherous mountains. Since then, Gondolin had seen a renewal of the arts that saw no comparison since the exiles traveled from Valinor. Memory created art, but sometimes, something unique would surface – like the scroll Galor placed on the desk before Erestor, the smell of strange lands clinging to the fading ink.

"What is this?" Erestor asked.

"I have no idea. I was told it came from the east. Let the language occupy you. For all I know, it's a list of the stores found in some distant lord's pantry." Galor offered a seat for Erestor at the desk and left the young elf alone with the shelves and dust.

The shape of eastern runes fascinated Erestor, but his concentration drifted as he picked through their meaning that day.

"_Ever in memory have our people been enslaved, our lands taken_ . . ."

Erestor knew the shape of the mountains, familiar as his mother's hand. He knew the seasons as the Echoriath brought them: frigid winters, temperate summers. He'd seen no visual proof of the sea – no artist dared portray it. He'd read of the sea, heard the waves in a story's meter, seen the color in Glorfindel's eyes. The sea and the plains and the deserts to the east waited beyond the city; Erestor thought of the seven gates guarding The Way. He imagined what the gates must sound like as they opened.

". . ._he is a beautiful and fair god. He promises justice and_. . ."

Erestor's arms knew the balanced weight of a sword; his ears knew the quiet harp-thrum of a bow; his fingers knew the quick slice of a knife, but he could not defend himself with the skill that marked the other sons of Gondolin's great lords. Ecthelion taught Erestor just enough, and no more. The lessons ended so often in Ecthelion's silence, a distant look on his lovely face, that Erestor began to practice in private, or seek out other masters.

Erestor never spoke of Ecthelion's recalcitrance, as Erestor had come to see it. The result was that Erestor knew a little skill with many weapons, but not enough skill to be identified with one, as others his age were. Erestor excelled in language, song and story, but he knew that, however often he had watched Turgon bring down an opponent with words alone, words could only aid Erestor so much in the strange lands beyond the seven gates.

". . . _I chose to follow him, and beg you to do the same_."

Erestor pushed the scroll aside and settled into the high backed chair. He drew his knees up to his chin and pondered a list of things that he might need were he ever free to leave Gondolin.

Maps. He must find maps, memorize them. His eyes roamed the library. Where, he wondered, did Glorfindel store his maps? Ecthelion kept few in their house, but Glorfindel kept everything.

Erestor spent the remainder of the afternoon searching through stacks and bound volumes. He found fragments and sketches of distant lands, pieces to store away in his memory. As he searched, Erestor began to devise a wayward sense of the forbidden world. The scraps were not nearly enough, but Erestor was heartened by his new mission.

What he did find, in abundance, was Glorfindel's script, singular and familiar like pieces of the Golden Flower's lord were left scattered about the house in his absence. Notes and thoughts and lists were left in the least likely places, filling Erestor's sight so completely that when he finally left the library that day he felt that Glorfindel's handwriting was its own sort of map; a true map. Possibly, the clue that led to the one map that Erestor searched for.

Erestor dined alone with his mother. He'd hoped that Idril would join them, but her duties kept her tied to the palace. They ate cold summer soups flavored with Alda's favorite herbs. The meal began in the Fountain dining hall, a room that often seemed small when it was filled with visitors and friends. That night, it seemed huge.

Alone, Erestor and Alda stared at each other across the empty table. A vast mural of Telperion and Laurelin covered the main wall beside them; the jeweled mosaic glinted in the candlelight. Lanterns swayed from branches in the garden, doors thrown open to the summer night. The lantern shadows moved across the wide floor of the dining hall, brushed against Erestor and Alda's feet. Soon it would be sundown and all conversation would cease until morning, but neither wished to speak while they still could, not when their voices echoed toward the high ceiling.

"This is madness," Alda said and gathered her plate and goblet. "Let us eat beside the pool."

Erestor collected his things and followed her out into the garden. Even the fountains seemed quiet in those empty weeks. The pool was the largest of several and placed centrally in the overgrown courtyard. They removed their shoes and sat cross-legged on a cool slab of stone located at a corner of the pool. Situated there, the water moved beside them and beneath them.

"Try this." Alda place a piece of fruit on Erestor's plate, and then another and another until she had nothing left. She dipped her plate into the pool, watched the water drip from the ornate rim and finally put the plate aside.

"You should eat," Erestor said.

"The wine is better than food," she said as she held up her goblet, "it tastes like longing."

Erestor watched her take a sip. When she opened her eyes, she smiled as if she knew a secret. Alda's humor was as infectious as a rumor. Erestor, reluctantly, laughed. Smiling at each other in the last hour before the sun disappeared behind the mountains; an idea seemed to occur to them simultaneously.

"I want to tell you. . ." Alda said.

"I'd like for you to tell me . . ." Erestor said at the same time.

". . . a story." Alda finished.

Erestor laughed and moved to closer to her, dangling his feet into the water. "I want you to tell me a story I've never heard before. This story will be true" – he regarded her pointedly – "and it will involve Ada and Glorfindel. You may also be included in the story."

"My child, you're like an old advisor, the rules that you impose – and with such authority. Can you not, for once, let the story create itself?"

"If I did, you'd soon be telling me what an oak tree told you when you rode past it in the winter. I want to hear a story that I should write down and keep."

"You have no interest in oaks?" Alda dipped her feet into the water.

"Of course I Iike oaks, but you're my oak tree and the little I know of this family comes from the history of other Houses. Why do we keep such few records?"

Alda sighed. "Memory is the truest record."

"Then I ask you to broaden my memory." Erestor glanced at her from the corner of his eye and waited.

The lantern light reflected in Alda's fathomless eyes, bright like the pool beneath them, identical to his own. She considered his request.

"You want to hear something from the forbidden time?" she asked.

"Absolutely."

"Let us start with this. I left Valinor at your father's bidding. Tirion lay in dark ruins and I had only enough time to gather what my hands could carry before I found myself swept away by the swift tide of bodies and torches following Fëanor's speech: 'Let the cowards keep this city' he said. And I ever will be a coward if bravery is what I witnessed. I lost track of Ecthelion almost immediately, so I hurried to find Idril because she was familiar like a sister, and her father spoke good sense. No one else from my family agreed to leave their home. My father, my mother, my grandparents all remain with Finarfin in the Blessed Realm. This you know.

"Glorfindel, sworn to Turgon's wishes, traveled ever close to me and Idril. But he would have watched over us, no matter his fealty, because he is ever good and I had not known a day without Glorfindel's presence; cousins are we, and also Idril, but this you know as well."

Alda paused and watched the lantern light across the water as if she stored her memory in torchlight.

"The Doom was spoken. Finarfin turned back, and I longed to follow him, but still I could not find Ecthelion. So I traveled onward toward the ice, following the gold of Idril and Glorfindel's hair as if the color held some memory of the trees. And I began to panic, not because I traveled, but I became transfixed by the thought that Ecthelion changed his mind after begging me to go with him.

"Glorfindel must have seen the fearful look upon my face because he left us to go in search of Ecthelion, wherever he could find him in the lost and scattered host. The night was endless and cold, so dark that one could hardly identify their neighbor. My marker in the darkness was golden hair, like the light of Mindon.

"He was gone for hours, maybe days, it was impossible to tell the difference with no light to chart the time. When Glorfindel returned, like an apparition in the mist, Ecthelion rode beside him on a horse I'd never seen before. The horse was grey and there was blood in its mane, and on the hands that held the reins. We watched the ships burn in silence.

"And in silence did Ecthelion travel on with us. Not a word did he speak.

"And when I asked, 'Whose blood is this?'

"Glorfindel answered for him, said it was the blood of Ecthelion's father, killed not long after we'd left Tirion. Ever beside him did Glorfindel stay as we traveled onward, and always did Glorfindel answer for him, as if he knew Ecthelion's thoughts. Across the ice, Glorfindel spoke and spoke and Ecthelion rode quietly saying nothing.

"Before Glorfindel rode out to search for Ecthelion, they had been acquaintances, nothing more. Traveling together like night and day, two opposites in everything with Glorfindel's incessant chatter drawing Ecthelion away from sadness; the two became the greatest friends. Dark and light, dour and bright – the figures that led Turgon's exiles began to grow together in our hearts to fill the absence of the blessed trees.

"And it was Glorfindel that made Ecthelion, at last, laugh over some inane joke he told as we stumbled through the bitter cold. Glorfindel brought him back to us; I doubt another could have done it. And they have never parted since."

A bell rang out across Gondolin, signaling the start of the night vigil.

"Thank you," Erestor whispered, and kissed Alda's sharp cheek.

They lingered silently beside the pool for hours into the night. In time, Alda's hound waded into the water and snapped at the jewel like fish that swam within it. Erestor stifled his laugh and slipped into the water to drag the hound out by her scruff. Wet and bedraggled, Erestor dripped farewell to his mother and left to wander the city.

As dawn approached, Erestor climbed the inner stair that took him to the top section of the city wall. He found Idril and Alda standing near each other. Together they greeted Midsummer as the sun appeared above the mountains. A song rose up from the city, the sound of it haunting like captured mist and twilight. Erestor watched the sun ascend, the light tracing a map of the ragged horizon. The song of Tarnin Austa flowed through Erestor like longing. The song made him ache for something he could not name, something that he had not found yet.

So uncomfortable did it make him that Erestor was pleased when the song ended and he was free to go seek out the cool, dark rooms of his house. He was tired from the silent night of doing nothing and went straight to his bed.

The half-opened shutters revealed a package placed across his pillows; the shape of the brightly wrapped gift unmistakable. Erestor climbed onto the bed and opened the attached note. The script, so present in Erestor's mind, flowed in golden ink across blue paper.

_This sword belongs to you. If you're impatient to learn its story, ask Idril. Or you may wait until I return home. I carry the sword from the hands of Mandos. You'll find my gift in the library._

_For wisdom follows sight,  
Glorfindel_

Erestor unknotted the cords binding the sword in strange fabric. The hilt was plain, save for a single black stone, so black it seemed blue in the half-light filtering through the shutters. The hilt fit perfectly in Erestor's hand, balanced like a familiar pen. The weight gave Erestor the impression that he could write a history with the sword's tip; that he could fill the spaces that had not yet been given words.

Erestor held the sword out before him and wondered if he could force his father to teach him the sword's mysteries. If not, he would beg Glorfindel to secretly instruct him.

He deciphered the old characters inscribed along the blade: "The Spring that Feeds the Fountain." He stared at the blade, turned it this way and that. The metal seemed fluid, like water. The hilt did not warm to Erestor's touch.

He wrapped the sword back up and placed it beneath his bed. As he left the room and followed the long hallway leading to the library, he felt as if he emerged from a cold, dark pool.

All chill fled, however, when Erestor discovered a small book left for him on a window casing in the orderly Fountain library. He flipped to the first page and read: "The Journey from Aman." The handwriting was messy and familiar.

A scrap of blue paper fell into Erestor's lap: "At least half of this story is true. –G."

Erestor settled into the window seat and warmed himself in sunlight while his mind traveled beyond the safe walls of Gondolin.

And far beyond the window and the city and the Encircling Mountains, the Fifth Battle started.


	3. Unnumbered Tears

_*Beta work by the ever patient Levade, without whose amazing critique there would be no battle. A box of Turkish Delights is not sufficient thanks for the care she's brought to this story.*_

**The Forgotten Tree**

Chapter Three: Unnumbered Tears

_A thousand years away Erestor's dark eyes were cold like polished stone. He said, "I have seen the lands beyond the seven gates and they are nourished by blood."_

"_What else did you find in those lands?"_

"_I found it difficult to see anything at all without my heart," Erestor said._

"_What of hope?"_

"_What of it? I protect hope where I find it – but hope is a memory captured in song. I remember hope in rare mornings when the sunlight covers my bed in golden warmth, the moment before I wake – and I think that I need only turn my head to find it. But when I turn, the bed is empty."_

*

The cliffs rose like white fortress walls to either side of the Pass of Sirion. Sunrise, heralded by distant trumpets, came slow and late – the sunlight trickled down from the eastern crags like the small falls that dripped from crevices in the rock, slowly, as if sunlight measured in drops could be collected like a bright sea.

Glorfindel guarded the march to the eastern side of the Pass. Ecthelion followed the river to the west, but close enough to be in Glorfindel's sight when he glanced across the broad path. Behind them Gondolin's army stretched out like a glimmering echo of the river. They had traveled slowly in order to reach the Fen of Serech on the appointed day. Their scouts returned with no great news each time they were sent out, as if every dark creature had been hoarded into Angband for their poison to be increased in a shadowy concentration. Contrary to logic, Gondolin's numbers were safer marching toward battle than they had ever been during the Long Peace.

Through the proceeding night Turgon's host remained silent in observation of the vigil. A quiet murmur of voices began when the trumpets of Fingon's nearby army signaled the morning of Midsummer. If Glorfindel listened closely, which he did, he could make out the low song Ecthelion hummed as he rode.

Glorfindel's horse knew the sound of Fingon's army by its blood and long memory, and picked up its walk as the pass began to widen toward the plain. Soon, Turgon motioned for his Captains to join him up a steep path leading to Fingon's watch upon Eithel Sirion.

The happiness of Fingon's greeting, Turgon's army arriving unlooked for, briefly overshadowed Glorfindel's troubling sense of uncertainty. In battles past he had always had some idea of the dangers he rode toward. But years of being locked away in Gondolin had altered Glorfindel's intuitive knowledge of Morgoth's intentions.

"The ruin is more . . . ruinous than I remembered," Ecthelion said as he joined Glorfindel on the upper watch of the Eithel.

Behind them, Turgon greeted his brother with much gladness. His two Captains stood apart and surveyed the glittering army below them on one side, hidden away in the Pass, and the dust curling in smoky shapes across the entrance to Thangorodrim on the other. The sky was increasingly dark from the soot that rose up from the peak.

"I cannot help but wonder why our old acquaintance wants all the lands from Mount Taras to Dor Daidelos if he's only going to turn them all to dust," Glorfindel said, speaking in their old tongue rather than the newer language of Gondolin, as they often did when they spoke privately.

Ecthelion laughed for the first time in weeks. "It seems clear to me that Morgoth likes dust and despair. . ."

". . .and ash."

"And ash, though I never thought I'd see the day that you tried to reason through Morgoth's motivations. The utter ruin he carries with him seems more a casualty than a goal." Ecthelion dismounted and Glorfindel did the same. Their eyes followed the black smoke of Thangorodrim upward.

"So, we are to wait," Glorfindel said.

"We are to hold back and guard the pass." Ecthelion's horse rested his chin on Ecthelion's shoulder. Glorfindel watched them both watch the sky.

"What do you feel?"

"I don't feel anything, which is the problem."

They stood quietly until Glorfindel suddenly remembered the day. "Many blessings for the new year," he said with as much honest and constructed enthusiasm that he could muster.

Ecthelion's smile was nothing more than a small quirk of his mouth. "We'll certainly need blessings," he said and turned back to the plain.

*

It was the smell of blood that Glorfindel would carry back with him to Gondolin. For four days Turgon's army held back as the beacon in Dorthonion remained unlit. Maedhros and his supporters never arrived and rumor flew that the sons of Fëanor had all been slaughtered before their horses could reach the arid field of Anfauglith in the eastern distance.

Late the first day, Glorfindel waited, hidden by trees, with others of his house and watched the slaves of Angband cut the hands and feet – and too slowly, the head from blind Gelmir, taken prisoner so many years before. Reflexively Glorfindel's hand tightened on his sword; he took a step forward and he truly thought that if his lord allowed him to go, he might solely make a difference. Yet he was commanded to wait.

Fingon's army rushed forward and Turgon's stayed back. So for four days, Glorfindel charted their progress by the smell of spilled blood. The blood of man smelled like metal, the blood of elves like a felled tree, the blood of orcs like decay, as if they'd expired some time before a wound was opened.

And when would the blood stop? Before leaving Aman Glorfindel only knew death through rumor of Oromë's hunt and the ritualistic madness of the festivals in Oromë's honor. When Glorfindel first drew his sword in the cool anger of defense once he'd crossed the Grinding Ice, he was bewildered to find how deeply easy it was for him to kill. His hands were gifted with a foresight of movement, a quick and lethal knowledge that he did not know he possessed until the killing was done.

Because of his hands, the blood-blackened, lethal accuracy of them, Glorfindel immersed himself in tending vines and had neglected to take a wife. If his wine stored memory, transferred it by touch and breath - Glorfindel preferred to keep his thoughts safely confined to the rambling, voiceless fruit. The exiles could only question so much and even the blameless on these shores carried guilt. Until he returned home, for Glorfindel truly believed the waters leading home to Aman would be open again to them some day, his hands would work to protect the living.

"I cannot listen to this massacre and not want to rush forward," Pellas said as worked his way through the undergrowth to the place where Glorfindel stood. Pellas was second in command of the Golden Flower's guard, and had been raised as a brother to Glorfindel. He brushed a leaf from his sleeve and peered with his Captain through the trees.

"The Pass must be kept safe and our King is as wise as his brother who we will follow to the ends of the world. What is being said?" Glorfindel and Pellas crouched down on the loamy ground and lowered their voices.

"That we've been tricked, that Maedhros is in league with Morgoth, this from the younger ones who have never met the sons of Fëanor. Those who served under your father fear Maedhros is detained or worse," Pellas said. His voice was quiet, like the rush of the river, a sound that gave Glorfindel hope even though their worries were greater than the sum of every battle they had witnessed together.

"And the remainder, I suppose, are excited to fight together with the Second Born. They're curious to witness things they've only heard about." Glorfindel had felt the same way when he heard the rumors that flew after the Battle of Sudden Flame and the death of Fingolfin.

"You ask questions to keep me occupied," Pellas said with a smile, "I have no more knowledge than you, and you know our hearts. Give me a task to distract me from madness."

"Be the eyes that watch behind us, as you always been, for me and for my father."

Pellas nodded, rose and turned back into the evening shadows and lingering smoke that filtered through the withering trees.

So Glorfindel continued to watch, still and bright, straight as a sword as he waited to join the battle. The fighting continued through the nights. Glorfindel used the cover of darkness to seek out Ecthelion, to meet with Turgon, to trade news.

"Where is Maedhros?" Glorfindel asked on the third night.

"I've heard nothing, Ecthelion said. "For his sake, he'd best be dead."

They stood hidden by a dense hedge of fragrant evergreen, the scent of the trees sharp like Elven blood. Unnatural fires burned in the distance toward Angband and the air took on a new sense of carnage and scorch.

Ecthelion's mouth was made for music but his words often lacked a chord's harmony of hope and longing. Glorfindel expected the truth from him, however bleak. For this reason they complimented each other in battle like morning and evening. Sometimes Ecthelion's pragmatism went too far – such as this night. He shifted uncomfortably and tried again for hope.

"I think Maedhros will come," Ecthelion said, "but too late."

"The pass must stay guarded," Glorfindel said.

"If we're all that's left, we cannot hold the pass long."

Glorfindel smiled despite his thoughts. "The fires are new."

"The fires seem familiar."

"I know," Glorfindel said. "Let us go find Turgon and reason with him some more."

*

"Morgoth's reserves have been unleashed," said Turgon. He knelt on the bare, sandy floor of his tent beside the river and used his finger to trace a detailed map in the dirt. Glorfindel and Ecthelion knelt with him and the three combined their knowledge of hearsay and fact in order to draw a picture of the past days of battle.

"The fires have taken shape. What else do you think waits in Angband? I doubt the last rush emptied Morgoth's reserves." Glorfindel met Turgon's gaze across the crude map and they made their decision in silence.

Turgon gracefully rested his palms against his knees and he turned to Ecthelion for the same grave and quiet discussion. Their choices hung invisibly and heavily in the air between them. They each came to the same conclusion.

"We will ride at dawn," Turgon said. "Have you enough time to prepare?"

"We are prepared. We have been prepared," Ecthelion said before his lord had truly finished.

Glorfindel nodded in agreement and smoothed the map with the flat of his hand until nothing remained of it but river sand and pebbles.

*

No historian has ever been able to describe the heat of a Balrog. The sun's heat was too bright a metaphor; it eased the winter and replenished the lands in the summer. The fire of a forge shaped metal into art. Hearth fire brought food and stories. Even the fires that came from the sky and burned forests, the fires that crumbled cities in battle, were inadequate comparisons for a Balrog's heat.

Morgoth's creatures burned in black flame that fed more flames with its burning, a furnace of grotesque fire that devoured itself only to grow stronger.

Balrogs were wise and cunning, undefeatable – not for their fire, but by the strength of their ancestry, the intimate knowledge of their opponents' fear.

Glorfindel and Ecthelion rode behind Turgon toward Thangorodrim and though they had only heard the tales of the Balrog that defeated Fëanor, they knew immediately what blackened, glowing fire issued from Angband as Morgoth released his cruelest weapons.

On that day, the day that would come to be known as the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, neither Glorfindel nor Ecthelion came close enough to a Balrog to see the creature's eyes, but they would often dream of those spiritless, bright voids when they returned to Gondolin.

They hacked their way through to Fingon, who had retreated across the plain. It always seemed, since the exiles left Aman, that hope and despair arrived simultaneously. Maedhros appeared, galloping with his army toward Fingon and Turgon's retreating hosts. As if the flame of Maedhros' hair had to be matched, Morgoth sent out Glaurung, the oldest of his dragons.

Glorfindel's golden armor was wet from blood, both orc and Easterling. His gloves were slick, yet his hands were as true as ever, cutting paths where he could make them to keep the numbers away from Turgon and his guard. Glorfindel watched Glaurung slither like a jewel-armored snake between the armies of Fingon and Maedhros.

As he watched, Glorfindel could not help but think that Glaurung was beautiful with his poisonous green scales and his knowledgeable red eyes – mesmerizing in his beauty. He wondered how something so lovely could be so lethal, but as his sword reached forward and twisted in a motion he knew like breathing, he realized that he didn't admire Glaurung so much as understand the dragon's skill.

The day wore on. Maedhros' army was stifled by treachery and they retreated, fleeing as suddenly as they had arrived that morning. The battle around Glorfindel lulled as Morgoth's allies gathered to chase the sons of Fëanor. Glorfindel, unable to call an army back however much he wished to, took advantage of the lapse in fighting to seek out Ecthelion. They had not strayed far from each other throughout the day.

Ecthelion's hair had come loose from its ties and fell across his shoulders in slick tangles. His eyes were fiercely blue, eerily bright against the blood that stained his face.

"Fingon's army cannot last much longer," Ecthelion said. "It is easier for us, we've rested for four days. Do we retreat like Maedhros?"

Glorfindel formed an answer but had not time to give it voice as Maeglin rode up between them.

Maeglin, Turgon's nephew, would have been of greater use if he had stayed back as regent of empty Gondolin. Yet, he was there with them at Angband and Glorfindel and Ecthelion had successfully avoided him until then.

Maeglin's beauty was marred by ambition. He spoke, always, as a superior would speak to his servants. Long accustomed to Turgon's favor, the lords of the Golden Flower and the Fountain could not, try as they might, greet Maeglin with anything but disdain. The cycles of contempt amongst the three of them grew stronger every year.

"Planning your retreat?" Maeglin asked.

"I have not seen you today, Maeglin." Ecthelion pushed his horse forward against Maeglin's younger mount until the space between them grew uncomfortable. Maeglin backed away.

Glorfindel's horse was jostled as the point was made, and snapped, ears pinned, at the closest target – the flank of Ecthelion's mare.

"I have been serving my lord as messenger," Maeglin said. "I carry his word to you now. You will not turn back like that traitorous, red haired coward."

"We did not say . . ." Glorfindel interrupted.

"I heard what you said, and so will Turgon." Maeglin stared at Glorfindel as if sternness gave his words greater gravity.

"Don't try to reason with him," Ecthelion muttered.

Morgoth's reserves returned across the plain. The battle would resume very soon, though the clank of metal and the roar of flame had not ceased.

"You're to guard the rear," Maeglin said, "but no sneaking off."

"Who will protect our lord and our King?" Glorfindel asked. His horse strained against the bridle, ready to move off toward the next surge.

"When I hear the order from Turgon's mouth, I'll change position, but not until then," Ecthelion said.

"You refuse orders?" Maeglin smiled as he asked.

Luckily Morgoth's army answered the question for them. There was no time to rearrange their ranks. Within moments Glorfindel and Ecthelion were separated by a phalanx of orcs. Maeglin fled, but neither saw which direction he headed toward.

Pellas, ever the eyes behind Glorfindel's back, called out in alarm to his Captain. Glorfindel's horse kicked out as he turned, striking down an orc that staggered toward them. He searched out Pellas' face in the midst of the confusion and found him just as his second in command took down an Easterling whose ax fell short its mark, Glorfindel's head, as the man stumbled to the ground.

Glorfindel breathed in so that he might shout his thanks – and Pellas would have nodded in return if an arrow had not found his throat. The words were stolen from Glorfindel's mouth as he watched Pellas slump against his horse's neck. His blood flowed in a beautiful pattern, like ancient symbols coloring the bereft animal's coat. Glorfindel's gratitude turned to lament and he dismounted so that he might fight his way through the gore-thick ground to grab the reins of Pellas' horse. He eased his body down and felt the last heat of Pellas' spirit.

"This is not our last meeting," Glorfindel said and kissed Pellas' gloved hand.

The two horses kept watch and waited as Glorfindel continued forward, there was no time to lose himself in grief, working his way toward Turgon who fought beside his brother. A heap of golden – armored bodies grew in front of the gates of Thangorodrim. The flames of Balrogs and dragons smothered the air and Glorfindel thought he knew the smell of blood and fire like a dream he could not place.

The Dwarves of Belegost arrived in time to save the armies of the King – the heat could not pierce their armor. Leaping through carnage, so thick he could not tell elves from men and orcs, Glorfindel's guard followed him until he spotted the familiar outline of Ecthelion's horse, her once grey coat ruined. Glorfindel did not know that he held his breath until the panic in his chest subsided as he saw that Ecthelion still lived. They came near each other and Ecthelion's horse used her body as a shield that allowed them to work their way closer to Turgon as Glorfindel followed.

"Mount up behind me," Ecthelion yelled as he offered his hand for Glorfindel to swing up. They leapt and pressed on through the wall of bodies, both living and dead. Turgon's distinctive colors came into sight just as Gothmog, Lord of the Balrogs, cut a flaming path dividing them from their king.

Yet Glorfindel could not help but feel that there was hope as long as Ecthelion fought near him, in front of him in the saddle – spurring his horse forward as Glorfindel's sword tore through the beasts that assailed them from all sides.

"There is an opening," Ecthelion said and they leaned forward together to chase it. They were almost there when Ecthelion slowed his horse.

"Go!" Glorfindel exclaimed. "Why are you holding back?"

Ecthelion did not reply. Bewildered, Glorfindel craned his neck to look past Ecthelion and his sight was filled with the white flame that flew up as their king received his death blow from the blade of Gothmog's axe.

"It cannot be," Ecthelion murmured.

And yet it was. They watched together as the High King's banner fell to the ground and silence covered the plain. Too many times since their journey from Aman had they witnessed the death of a king.

"Ecthelion, we must find Turgon," Glorfindel said, his sword arm heavy and the other clutched tightly around Ecthelion's waist.

Ecthelion gave no reply, nor did he turn his rein to find their lord, the new king. He could only stare at the towering height of Gothmog.

Glorfindel reached up and turned Ecthelion's head toward him so that he could speak into his ear, "Send the horse forward. We cannot protect Turgon if our bodies are laid to waste. There is still blood left in us to fight."

Ecthelion moved as if to speak, but he said nothing. The fierce light of determation returned to his eyes, clear as water, and he urged his horse forward at Glorfindel's bidding. They arrived at Turgon's side in time to hear the words of the man called Huor. Hope would come from Gondolin, he said. They must live to fight another day.

Turgon summoned his Captains and nephew with a bitter, grievous motion, as if his hand held the weight of the Noldor.

"Glorfindel, Ecthelion," Turgon said. "Protect us as we retreat."

"But, my . . . king," Ecthelion started.

"We have no choice. Gather what is left of my brother's army and guard us as we retreat to the Pass. These men have offered their lives so that we might see an end to all our suffering – both of our kind."

Again Ecthelion tried to argue, but Glorfindel gripped the hand that held the left rein of Ecthelion's horse and turned back to their guard.

"Make a path to my horse," Glorfindel ordered the ranks that remained of the Golden Flower from his place behind Ecthelion. He looked back over his shoulder as they rode away, and he committed the faces of both men, Huor and Húron to his long memory.

They found his horse beside Pellas' and Glorfindel dismounted as Ecthelion galloped back to the ranks of his House. Glorfindel took the grief-lonely reins of his second's horse so that he could guide the stallion behind his own back to Gondolin. They retreated from the ruined plane and Ecthelion and Glorfindel found themselves following Maeglin's orders as they guarded the rear so that Turgon, the new High King, could return with his diminished army back to the hidden city.

As they approached the cool waters of the Sirion, Glorfindel felt the heat of the Balrogs behind him and he thought, how strange it was to be leaving a battle unfinished, so contrary to his nature. He felt pulled to that heat as if he were caught by a flaming whip and it seemed to him that one day, unexpectedly, the whip would pull him under.

They traveled for a day without resting. When they paused, it was only a brief stop to bathe what they could of the scorched blood off of them. The river turned black; the waters smelled of death. Broken harnesses and dented armor, their numbers were reduced by half.

No one conversed as they rode; they spoke enough to relay orders, nothing more. Occasionally Ecthelion rode up beside Glorfindel and they moved together silently down a familiar path. They never needed words to know their hearts. Turgon led the march with his gaze fixed toward his secret city, his hope, and so straight did he ride that all who saw him knew that his determination belied his grief.

Pellas' solemn horse followed Glorfindel. The silence bred reflection and Glorfindel longed to say something light, something that would bring a smile to any anguished face around him, but he could not find words sufficient to relieve them of despair. Glorfindel had never felt so useless, nor so bereft.

_Unfinished_, Glorfindel thought – his leg brushing against Ecthelion's; their horses marched side by side – _unfinished_. He felt it would be better to die in battle than to have seen treachery and the death of another King, to be forced to flee in order to save the next King – it would have been better to die than to feel the regret of being able to do nothing.

Necessity quickened their steps as they moved higher up the pass. The stars kept gentle watch, the night sky a comforting shroud that made travel easier. The day hours gave too harsh a light in which to view the tarnished brilliance of what was left of the two armies.

The days, the weeks, were counted by hoof beats and the quiet music of the Sirion as it narrowed through the heights. There was no time to tally the living as they made their way back to Gondolin and Glorfindel dreaded the task. He felt the missing amongst them like a misplaced thought, as if they should be visible if he only knew how to look for them.

And then, like an unasked for gift, Turgon opened the Secret Way leading back into their city. A murmer rose up to break the silence of footfall and rushing water. Glorfindel and Ecthelion took their places to either side of the guarded entrance so that they might know if any spy followed. They kept watch as the army passed into the dark tunnel. Glorfindel's horse shifted restlessly from the waiting, one small bell remaining in his mane chimed as he moved; Pellas' horse quietly beside him. Ecthelion's horse stood still as a painting.

Turgon's most beloved Captains counted each one who passed them. Ecthelion did not look to their faces; he stared beyond them to the trees. Glorfindel smiled as he counted, pleased to find whatever familiar face he could returning to the city. It was later said that all who saw Glorfindel that day remembered why they followed their King, even to death – and the memory of Glorfindel's smile stayed with them until their own end, or farther still, across the sea.

Glorfindel and Ecthelion sat on their horses, bright sentries to either side of the hidden gate, for hours after the last Gondolithrum passed. They waited in vain hope that one, just one more, would emerge from the lonely valley. No one else arrived.

As the cool evening shadows closed around them, the two Captains dismounted and led their horses into the caverns. Ecthelion spoke old words to the gate, wrapping it in vines and secrets. His voice sounded ill-used in the darkness, broken as if he wept. But Glorfindel had never seen tears on Ecthelion's face; he was as hard and reliable as stone. One only witnessed the curious workings of Ecthelion's heart when he was caught up in song.

They led their horses in silence through the black tunnel. There was nothing to be said. For so long had they known each other, they did not need speech to tell their thoughts. The tunnel echoed all around them with phantom sounds, the hoarse murmur of the mountain, the water dripping down the carved walls. In the real and imagined sounds they encountered on the path, Glorfindel heard the voices of the dying on the plain of Anfauglith. Glorfindel walked in the lead and he placed his hand on his horse's neck to feel the shift of its muscle, a true weight near him that grounded his fears. Elves were not created to move beneath the earth.

Ecthelion began to sing lowly, softly. The song he sang was from the days that they were young and happy in Valinor; Glorfindel had not heard it in a very long time. Their horses sensed the peace deeply rooted in the sound and began to quicken their pace. Ecthelion's voice lifted their feet, urged them to move along past the darkness of the Secret Way. His voice pressed them onward toward the city.

They finally made their way through the long tunnel and mounted their horses again under the glittering stars. Glorfindel felt he could have lost an age in the dark passage, so long had the journey seemed.

Forward they went, side by side through each of Gondolin's gates guarding the tight pass. The guards opened each way for them in silent reverence. The guards knew their King, but they loved their Captains. Glorfindel and Ecthelion did not shut themselves away in the city as the other lords did. They knew everyone by sight and name. As they passed, the guards cried silently in relief that the two Captains returned and would rest safely in the city that night. As long as Glorfindel and Ecthelion stood, Gondolin would stand – and some hope would remain in the shadows.

Past the gates, the vale of Tumladen stretched before them. Its long meadows and rushing streams led to the foot of the city. Gondolin glowed in the night, calling to them though their hearts were heavy. The joy of returning home coursed through their horses, and the happiness flowed through the reins of even Pellas' rider less horse following behind them. Their hooves pulled freshness from the ground, an energy that moved through their weariness, burning like the first call of the hunt on a winter's morning. So they raced forward across the vale, their horses necks stretched low to the wind. They chased the city as if it were an ever-moving mark that might disappear into the mist. There was joy in their horses' rhythm, joy that could only be found in the uncertainty of the gallop – of not knowing what would happen in the next stride, but moving forward nonetheless.

At the foot of the tall stair that led to the city's great gate, horsemen took Glorfindel and Ecthelion's mounts, and the lonely horse that followed, leading them to the stables to make them comfortable for the night. Side by side the two lords tried to wipe the delight of the race from their faces as they climbed the many steps.

Ecthelion, at last, spoke. "Unbelievably, we return home."

"Are we to mourn or rejoice?" Glorfindel raised a hand in greeting to the Golden Flower guards who peered down at him from the gate. "Everyone's watches will be doubled."

"Their watches were doubled while we were gone," Ecthelion said.

The Fountain guards greeted Ecthelion with less exuberance but their happiness to see his return was undeniable. It had always been that way, the differences between their Houses. Ecthelion's family showed their emotion through music. Glorfindel's wore their feelings openly like a seal upon their chests.

The city glowed in the light of many lanterns and the radiance of the trees that stood to either side of the entrance to Turgon's palace. Near the Main Square, Alda found them, her clothes stained with blood from the wounded that she had treated before the two Captains returned. The night seemed to move through her and her lovely face and dark eyes held the memory of better times.

Ecthelion's joy found him at last when he saw her, nor could Glorfindel contain his pleasure, for she was as close to him as a sister. Alda embraced them both and laughed as Ecthelion looked around them as if someone would appear from beneath a tree.

"You've returned though there are many who did not," Alda said, taking Ecthelion's face in her hands. She glanced over Ecthelion's shoulder and smirked. "And you too, bright lord, we've missed you both – though you stink like the evils you chased. I'm shocked the guards let you in."

She laughed to keep herself from weeping but the smile fled as she and Ecthelion studied each other. Alda's hands traced the familiar shape of Ecthelion's face as if life could be captured and made safe by touch.

After long moments, Ecthelion broke their gaze and looked about the square. "Where is our son?"

"I could not find him," Alda said. "He will arrive when you least expect it. Until then, let me take you home and then I have more work to do." She took Ecthelion's hand to steer him away from the square.

Ecthelion turned and called to Glorfindel, "Until tomorrow!"

"Yes, until then," Glorfindel said and turned toward the northern wall of the city. He found himself alone for the first time in a very long while. The usual bustle of the streets was replaced by the dark silence of mourning and the duty of seeing to the wounded. Glorfindel looked forward to a bath and his bed. He knew the sun would rise in the morning and he would begin his duties, as he had for so many years. He would visit his vineyards – that thought filled him with happiness, and he would try his best to not think of those who were no longer there to enjoy the taste of that year's wine.

His house was lit from top to bottom to welcome his arrival – Galor had seen to that. Glorfindel entered to find the familiar scent of his home which only seemed to remind him that he must visit the families of those who had been lost, a dreaded task.

His steward helped him remove his light armor that would be polished to golden brightness by morning. He gave the steward his ring, the seal of his House, so that it too could be polished and the shadow of death wiped from its golden jewel. Galor was nowhere to be found, which was very much like his advisor. Galor had served Glorfindel's father and would prefer to greet his newly returned lord when the morning's brightness tempered old memories of losses – and Galor respected Glorfindel's privacy, knowing that he would not be ready to speak of the battle until he'd found rest.

Gladly, no one else found Glorfindel as he walked to his rooms. The fires were lit and he sat before the one near his bed and allowed his eyes to roam the signs and symbols carved into the stonework of the mantel. For some hours he sat there, working the knots from his hair and staring into the flames.

_Fire was always constant_, he thought. Wind – the wind was there with him as the armies fell and it was with him as he rode home across Tumladen. Wind changed its shape, but stayed the same. Water. Perfect water was constant. Glorfindel felt he could rely on water as he'd come to rely on the Fountain; water soothed flames.

He rose and walked into his garden. He removed his shirt and knelt beside the pool that was crowded by branches and vines. Lilies floated on the surface of the water. He turned, lay upon the stone and lowered his head until his hair floated all around him. He stayed like this for a very long time, watching the stars, his hearing muffled by the water.

In time he moved and bathed fully, washing the dirt of travel and death from his body and his mind. The waters of Gondolin held many mysteries; the waters kept secrets and eased the mind of sorrow. The waters were very much like Alda.

It was very late into the night when Glorfindel returned to his room and wrapped himself in a robe. He left the door to the garden open and moved closer to his bed. He felt that sleep just might find him –

– if not for the thing already asleep on his bed. "Erestor!" he said.

Slowly, Erestor opened his eyes, but he did not stir.

Glorfindel took his hand and tried to pull him awake. "How long have you slept here? Your father has returned and you were not there to greet him."

Erestor sat up. His black hair was in disarray and his eyes, fathomless like his mother's, seemed confused. "You're back," he said.

"Of course I am and, like I said, so is your father."

Erestor ignored him. "I had a dream. It was terrible – Galor was dying and he grabbed a necklace that was around my throat. Your ring hung on the necklace. I could not find you but I searched and searched. You were there – I know it – but I could not see you."

Glorfindel laughed and sat on the edge of the bed. "We will not be telling Galor of this dream."

"Oh no, of course not."

It always shocked Glorfindel to return from anywhere to see Erestor again. He was supposed to be Ecthelion's young and endearing son, forever that – not fully grown and filled with mysteries like his mother. However, right was right and: "Sons, good sons, should be present to greet their father who just returned from war."

Erestor dismissed the chiding with a flick of his hand. "He has mother. You have no one but Galor who is afraid to see you until the morning brightens the city. I stayed up talking with Galor tonight and he told me that you would return soon, so I thought I would wait for you – but you were long in coming and I fell asleep."

They sat like that for a while watching the fire glow and listening to the fountains.

At last Erestor asked, "How bad was it?"

"We have a new High King," Glorfindel said, which was enough. He could not say that Morgoth's creatures had piled the dead in a mountain that rivaled Thangorodrim, nor could he tell Erestor that he and Ecthelion were ordered to stand by and hear the dying, unable to assist or bring mercy until the very end. And the end . . .he could not say what they accomplished.

"I'm sorry," Erestor whispered, seeming to know Glorfindel's black thoughts without having to be told. "You must not be consumed by sorrow. We need you whole and well."

Erestor's knowledge of the world stopped where the mountains started but Glorfindel thought, when he looked at Erestor, that Ecthelion's son probably knew more about the order of things than himself. Of weapons and blood, Erestor knew little. Glorfindel hoped to keep it that way as long as he could, but it was time for Erestor to learn the secrets of the sword he'd left for him.

"Your father has missed you," Glorfindel said.

"I missed him too."

Again, they sat for a while not speaking.

_And I missed this_, Glorfindel thought. In their years together, watching the unlocking of Erestor's remarkable mind and the light of his spirit, they had become friends, at times closer than the friendship that Glorfindel shared with Ecthelion for he need not infer Erestor's heart when he offered it so openly. Erestor did not hide any joy or misery behind a stony countenance. Erestor hid nothing – nor had he anything to hide.

Glorfindel and Erestor were equals in silence and speech. In time, Glorfindel hoped that they would become equals in battle, as long as Erestor did not have to use those skills beyond the safety of the city.

"I will be going soon," Erestor said.

So involved was he in his thoughts of Erestor's safety that he did not, at first, know what Erestor meant. "Where are you going?"

Erestor laughed. "Home – where did you think I meant?"

Glorfindel smiled at his own confusion. "I'm not certain."

Erestor rose from the bed. "Lie down and I will sing to you, and hopefully kind dreams will find you."

Glorfindel did as he was told. Erestor sat down beside the bed and looked out into the garden. No music could compare to the songs of the Fountain. It had always been so. Their songs worked magic tinged with a voice of sorrow that reflected a time to come and the times that had passed. Their songs seemed to know that soon, as their kind reckoned time, there would be no equal songs left in those lands. Erestor's song that night did not bring images with it, only quietness like still water. The fountain in the garden seemed to lower its voice so that it could listen.

As he drifted into reverie Glorfindel thought, _Erestor waited here to bring me this gift._ When he opened his eyes again, it was morning and Erestor was gone as if his song was simply a lovely dream filled with hope – a dream that made Glorfindel long to keep Erestor's voice in a secret place where no dark thing could touch it.


	4. Morning

_Gorgeous Glorfindel art by Razimo illustrating a scene from chapter three can be found by searching Razimo at deviantart: To the Still Earth Say I Flow  
_

_Ever-patient beta work by Levade – I want to thank this story for sending me a beautiful friend._

**The Forgotten Tree**

Chapter Four: Morning

"_From without the world, though all things may be forethought in music or foreshown in vision from afar, to those who enter verily into Eä each in its time shall be met at unawares as something new and unforetold." -__The Silmarillion_

*

Gondolin murmured again; she stirred uneasily, a wounded, recovering shell waiting for her _fëa_ to return from the places it had journeyed without her – some parts of it irresolutely lost. Erestor rested in bed and watched the dawn light battle with the determined, lingering night shadows in his room. Inevitably, as ever, the dawn light won and Erestor stretched out against the soft sun-bleached linens. The walls in his room were blue, deep blue, trimmed in grey – the colors ground together with reflective sand before the artisans applied their well-kept concoctions. Once dried, the paints glimmered; the walls seemed to move like water as the days progressed and then retreated.

Erestor heard his mother's voice, a low alto in the main hall alongside the music of the birds that made their home in the courtyard. He heard his father's footsteps descending the small stair the family used most often. He felt, more than heard, the long-missed stirrings of life in the streets outside the house. Erestor slid soundlessly from his bed. He took great care to make no noise that would disturb the sounds of life returned around him, some part of him felt that if he were as translucent as a ghost, unnoticeable as a scout, that if his movements did not disturb the familiar routines of Gondolin, no harm could ever come to their kind again. It seemed like some long-held reasoning from his youth, at odds with the strangely grown creature his body inhabited, but it made sense to him just the same – if he were very still, he could witness the vital current of his home and ward away any discordant note.

Erestor dressed in loose fitting clothes, worn and grey like Ecthelion's eyes. He tied the unruly thickness of his hair back with a well-used strip of leather and turned to leave the room, but the image of himself in the polished mirror caught his eye. Erestor sighed – he looked just like his mother. Alda did not conduct herself in the manner of the other Noldor of her station in Gondolin, but there was no denying what she was despite the rich soil that was often caught beneath her fingernails. Erestor thought he could resemble worse, but wondered if he would ever be able to carry his frame in a hard, demanding presence like his father. Before leaving the room, Erestor stooped and touched the sword hidden beneath his bed.

He followed the hall to his father's library where he sat and wrote the things that had come to him in the night. There was a song following Erestor, a half-formed tune that was not about the battle precisely, for he had no details yet, no knowledge of what had transpired – but the song was a lament. There was no better place to work in the house than his father's library. The walls of the room were lined with shelves that held musical instruments, some familiar to Erestor's hands, some that bewildered him, used so seldom that he had no idea what sound came from their intricate design. The instruments were laid out in an orderly fashion, polished to glowing brightness or gleaming in an elaborate swirl of wood grain.

There were many elves Erestor's age that had not returned from the battle, this he knew. He had no desire to go out into the city yet; he did not want to see which doors bore the shadowy seal of loss. Erestor had barely seated himself when the sound of familiar steps crossed the doorway.

"There you are," Ecthelion said. He crossed the room and came to where Erestor sat, pulling him fiercely up to him.

It seemed that the world became right again as Ecthelion held him, as if his father's hands shifted something back into place, something that had moved out of alignment. Ecthelion smelled of wood smoke and strange places. Erestor sensed the map of his father's journey, still fresh in his mind. Erestor did not try to look further.

They stood back and admired each other, solemn until they both laughed. Ecthelion's water-blue eyes still glowed no matter what images they held in secret. Erestor expected to find him much changed, as he had thought to find Glorfindel the night before, but they both seemed the same – beautiful and constant. Erestor thought it very strange how things could happen, terrible things, but the appearance of the world stayed the same. His father's hair was not tied back. Erestor held him close again and pressed his face into the dark thickness of it. "I missed you," Erestor said.

The eagles brought word of the battle to the ones left behind in the city, but they had not brought specifics. Erestor and the others took heart in the belief that the eagles would have said, directly, if any of the great ones fell – but the journey itself was dangerous. They did not know for certain who would come back until each passed the city's great gate.

"Where were you?" Ecthelion asked.

"I spent the evening with Galor and fell asleep there. I knew mother would greet you at the square but it bothered me that Glorfindel would return to a quiet house."

"Good – then you have seen him. He's not made like us, I worry for him."

"I found him and he seemed bothered more that I was not home to greet you than he was by any sadness. It's hard to tell with him – he always smiles."

In the library the sunlight streamed through the windows. The room was built to catch the morning light. They sat for a moment in silence.

"Glorfindel covers his worry with gladness," Ecthelion said after a while. "It _is_ hard to know what he is thinking. Let us keep him close in the weeks to come so that he cannot hide away in his vineyard. I had hoped to have the day free to spend with you, but Turgon called me early. Glorfindel told you?"

"Of Fingon? Yes. The eagles came soon after he fell." Erestor's fingers flexed nervously on the table.

Ecthelion stared out into the garden. "There is much work to do."

There were things that Erestor wanted to say. If he could only form the first words, he knew the rest would follow. He'd never experienced anything like this before, the blanket of grief muting their feigned normalcy, sitting in the library as they always had. Stories, songs – Erestor knew the world through them but the most remarkable creations only touched at the breath-stealing truth of it, the sliding sword of grief.

"How many from the Fountain?" Erestor whispered.

"Twelve."

He did not want to ask the names, not yet. He searched his mind for the first joyous thought to ease his inarticulate attempt to express his sadness. "You will bring Glorfindel with you to dinner tonight?"

Ecthelion welcomed the change of subject, rested his arm against the table and tried to allow his smile to reach his eyes. "I will if I can find him."

His father gazed too long for comfort. "What?" Erestor asked.

"It doesn't seem possible that you are fully grown – the Gates of Summer and the most important day of your life. I missed two significant celebrations." Ecthelion's wistful expression swiftly changed to a playful, narrow-eyed appraisal, as if he were considering a particularly obstinate young horse. "Fully grown in body but I think your mind sprung fully formed from some obscure vision of your mother's. You would be happier if you thought less."

"I am happy!" Erestor exclaimed, sounding younger than he intended.

"No doubt, but I would have you attend more parties and fewer councils."

"I like to listen." Erestor bit his lip and calculated his defense. "Every choice is argued from an individual's perspective. I have never witnessed a council where the correct decision was obvious – the winning argument is determined by delivery, rarely by common sense. It is an intricate dance, far more interesting to me than the movements I have seen at a gathering. I could study the progress of our minds for an age and not grow tired of watching and listening."

"That is what I mean!"

Erestor frowned. "I don't understand."

"I tried to make light of you. You countered humor with a well-versed defense. You might have simply looked at me and laughed. Laugh together, love – would that not be pleasant?" Ecthelion reached out and tapped a rhythm against the top of Erestor's hand. Erestor could just make out the song. Ecthelion continued, "And then we would have wasted less time with your very serious, considering mechanics" – he attempted to mimic Erestor but his mouth quirked too much to have the desired effect – "and already moved on to this."

Their discussion ended suddenly, and Erestor thought; I must remember every detail of my father, sitting here with me in this room, his room, with its cool corners and the warm breeze shifting the gauzy, grey drapes behind him. The details of the room were easier to catch than the line of Ecthelion's nose, the shape of his jaw – to catch those things required an artist's sense of symmetry, precision. I must remember his morning face, this first morning after his return. This is the face that Glorfindel and my mother . . . this is the face that I love.

Ecthelion removed the ring that he wore on the second finger of his left hand. Erestor had never seen his father's hand without it. He placed the ring carefully on Erestor's corresponding finger. The stone matched the hilt of the sword hidden beneath Erestor's bed; he had taken note of the similarities before but could not deny, with the ring so foreign on his finger, that the same craftsman fashioned both.

"From my father to your father to this day," Ecthelion said. "The ring is now yours and you will bring honor to our House. There was more ceremony the first time it was passed, but things are different now."

Erestor brought his hand up to study the ring, so involved was he in the clever design, the beautifully wrought details, and the history of the sword that matched it, that he did not think before saying, "There are others better suited."

As if he must have heard incorrectly, Ecthelion leaned back in his chair and asked, "What did you say?"

There would be no getting around it. "There must be another . . .I have not left the city. I can hardly hold the sword that Glorfindel gave me. Dolan, what of him? He is our cousin; he has traveled with you since you made the journey."

"He is dead." Ecthelion said simply, as if he commented on the signs preceding a particularly cold winter.

"Dead," Erestor repeated, numbly.

"Dead – as you will not be if you stay safely behind the gates of this city. Not being dead, you are free to manage the House." Ecthelion stood and began straightening instruments on the shelf closest to him.

"But you manage this House, as long as you are able, so there is no reason for me to manage anything until I learn to fight well. If you cannot see to the House, then you are dead, and what use will I be to anyone if I cannot carve my way through whatever dark thing took you so that I might properly bury your body or see the others to safety. Your reasoning makes no sense." Erestor stood to deliver his speech, but he found his feet unwilling to move him, so he pressed his palms to the table and readied himself for a battle toward which he held the strongest disadvantages: he was young and his opponent was Ecthelion.

"Erestor." The Fountain lord turned, fittingly prepared to continue the fight but another thought stopped him, quick as lightning, and Erestor's father returned in expression and stature. "What sword did Glorfindel give you? And when?"

Erestor breathed in his good fortune. "Come with me, I will show you. He left it for me to find while you were away."

As they walked side by side down the hall, Erestor wanted to place his head against Ecthelion's shoulder, but their argument was too fresh and the moment fled.

"Here." Erestor placed the sword on top of the unmade bed and unknotted the cords that wrapped it. He placed his hand that bore the ring near the hilt. "A perfect match."

From the look on Ecthelion's face, he would not be less comfortable if the ghosts of all the dead he knew walked into the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the sheathed sword so he could rest it against his lap. "Did Glorfindel say where he found it?"

"No – I thought to ask him today." Erestor leaned against the far wall and watched Ecthelion study the sword.

"I thought it was lost. I wonder why he never said . . . ." Other questions followed, but their meaning was lost in the old metal Ecthelion touched reverently, hesitantly as if sudden movement would coax out a spirit.

"Perhaps he did not wish to worsen your grief. When was the last time you saw it?"

The argument seemed unimportant, or the question Erestor meant to ask was larger than the objects they held in their hands – what is our history? They studied each other in the glimmering room.

He will tell me . . . he will sing the final note . . . .

"At my father's side, as it always was – that is where I last saw it as he stood near me and watched me make my choice." Ecthelion glanced down toward the blade as he continued – " I assumed the sword stayed with him in Aman. I see now that he sent it along with Glorfindel who made his decision with less haste."

Erestor waited for him to elaborate but Ecthelion stood and brought the sword to him, placing it back in Erestor's hands, a closing statement. Something was missing, something vital. It should have been the one day when Erestor felt connected to his history but he felt instead that he had more questions crowding his busy mind than he had when he awoke.

Erestor gripped the sword absently, suddenly furious with . . . who? He could not say for certain.

"How can you not know?" Erestor demanded. "How is it possible that the sword was held in Glorfindel's keeping all these years, a hand's breadth away from you, and it never came to your attention? What purpose did Glorfindel's secret serve? Did you not part well with your father; is there some shame attached to the sword?"

The chill returned to Ecthelion's countenance as Erestor asked and kept asking – a flood of questions, but even as he spoke, Erestor knew he addressed the wrong lord. "By all accounts that have been passed down to me your parents perished, like Turgon's wife, as they crossed the ice, but you tell me now that you do not know your father's fate? How many of our House stayed behind?"

Ecthelion's eyes were brilliant in anger. "Glorfindel should have kept the sword; he overstepped his duty. I would return it to him this day if there were not greater troubles to think of."

Ecthelion paused, and Erestor watched his deliberation, held his breath as Ecthelion chose his strategy. "The truth is I have no recollection of the time following our departure. The stories you have been given are pieced together from the accounts of others. When you discover the answers to your questions, please pass them along to me" – he glanced down to where they both held the sword and though neither struggled to hold it solely, it seemed to Erestor that the elaborate metalwork was a symbol of a greater battle, one that had been fought between father and son since their kind first awoke. Erestor wondered if it were the same with men with their short lives, the blade-sharp balance of past and future. Until that moment Erestor had only lived in the present; the future was a dream shaped through ink-smeared longings.

Erestor decided to let the sword go but Ecthelion removed his hands and left him with the full weight of the gift. Bewildered, they stood staring at each other, eyes large, unable to comprehend; they could not understand what topic brought them to quarrel twice in one ill-fated morning.

Yet Erestor could not help but ask, "Why did you go?" His voice was very small, a young voice that did not suit the question.

Ecthelion did not have to search long for his answer. "Because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. You have not lived long enough to know what I am saying – but one day you will find yourself caught in a question that your mind cannot answer and when that happens your heart will answer silently, your body will move toward its fate as if your will is an illusion fabricated to make you believe you have a choice. When your heart calls, you answer, not in words or thoughts, but in action."

Remember this, Erestor thought – don't forget the angles of Ecthelion's face, the sorrow and hope in his eyes. Remember the face as well as the words.

"I would prefer to make my own choices," Erestor said.

Ecthelion smiled. "I have no doubt you, more than any of us, will do just that" – he gestured toward Erestor's hand that bore the ring and held the sword – "you wear both now, as you should. I only ask that you do not allow the metal to ruin your hand for the pen."

"I can do both."

"And you will."

The sound of bells, small and large, a cacophony of bells, called out from the towers and high places throughout the city calling the lords to council.

"What will you do this morning?" Ecthelion asked.

"Idril has some work for me; she is worried for the displaced army that returned from the battle and is pleading with her father so that their families might be allowed to join them here if safe travel can be arranged."

"What will you do?"

Erestor laughed and slipped past Ecthelion so that he could wrap the sword once more and sweep the morning's arguments safely under the bed. "Take notes?" he said. "Whatever Idril tells me to do – when it comes to her I am like mother's hound."

"You understand my predicament!" The joy was back in Ecthelion's voice. He caught Erestor in his arms and pressed his mouth against Erestor's hair, spoke through his kiss. "Never doubt that I love you. I know you will do great things. Do you understand why I am careful with you?"

"I do," Erestor said, quietly. "Will you allow me to do more if I promise to be careful with myself?"

Ecthelion did not speak but Erestor felt him nod slowly before releasing him. It was not permission but it was enough to allow Erestor the hope of exploring new paths.

They said their farewell for the day and looked forward to the familiar routine of the evening meal and songs and stories.

*

The following days were gloriously busy; there was work enough to chase away the starved hounds of grief, but when the clouds passed over the city Glorfindel felt a chill that lingered long after the high summer light returned. He kept to himself as much as he was able and did not exaggerate his fatigue when he declined all but the most required visits; he had not dined with Ecthelion since they returned to Gondolin.

Glorfindel stared out the window while Galor recited a litany of the tasks that should be completed. The days flowed together like the lists on Galor's schedule, each morning identical to the next, things for Glorfindel to do in order to fill the time, to ensure the flawless flow of his House. Soon he would have a fortnight at the gate and he could not lose the sense that their doom waited for them, breathing poison against the Secret Way, dragon's breath on the doorway. Glorfindel rose from his desk; Galor continued speaking. The window looked out across a seldom-used square.

Glorfindel braced his hands against the window ledge and leaned out so that he could better feel the city. The rings on his fingers scraped against the cool stone. He closed his eyes so that he could feel the warm morning, the pale light like a promise. Alone at dawn, alone as he rose and prepared for his day, alone as he dined and entered his office so that Galor could present the list of each day's activities – every day the same habits. Dissatisfaction was a new feeling to Glorfindel, so accustomed he was to the routines that shaped his life. He felt as if he were coming apart.

And then Erestor appeared in the square below the window, his hair wet and tangled down his back. He seemed hurried and determined and looked as if he had slept in his mother's pool. They had not spoken since the night of Glorfindel's return and it had been easy for Glorfindel to not miss him when he had been out of sight. But a bright cord in Glorfindel's heart pulled tightly as he watched his young friend's deliberate pace below the window; it seemed as if Erestor embodied every fond promise, every reason why the city was built. Glorfindel watched until Erestor was nearly hidden by the leafy shadow of the large oak in the center of the square.

Glorfindel wanted to call out, but the name caught in his breath. Erestor – his hope, Erestor, who unknowingly, made everything better. Erestor, who somehow seemed made to fit into the empty places in Glorfindel's heart. Ecthelion's son was both young and old, and his eyes held the map that drew the winding path toward Glorfindel's destination. Why had he not noticed before? He should walk away from the window and close himself up in his house.

Instead, Glorfindel leaned out farther and did not notice Galor slipping up behind him.

"Erestor!" Galor called and Glorfindel flinched.

His mind no longer held dominion over his body, there was no sense left in him, not when the morning light rose so softly in the eastern sky and Erestor retraced his steps across the square in a meandering, studious path. Galor ducked back into the room to retrieve another list of something that Glorfindel should see to right away, leaving him alone with his new and sudden realization.

Erestor stood below the house. His eyes roamed the windows until he found his mark half-hidden in the thick vines that worked their way across the carefully cut stone wall. Erestor held books against his chest.

When their eyes met, Erestor tilted his head and smiled – and Glorfindel felt the same as he did when an opponent slipped past his shields and delivered a suffocating blow.

"Good morning," Erestor called up to the window.

Glorfindel breathed, as much as he was able and called back, "Good morning, Erestor. Where are you going?"

"I completed an errand for Alda and now I am going to the palace to return these books and bother Idril."

Glorfindel searched his mind for a suitable excuse, anything to catch Erestor's attention, to steal him for a few hours – but not now; he must first have time to think. Behind him, Galor cleared his throat.

"Are you listening? Tell Erestor to come up."

"Yes I am," Glorfindel turned and snapped, "and no, not yet."

Erestor's frown was touched with good humor. "What are you arguing about and where have you been hiding?"

"We have been very busy!" Glorfindel said.

"I have been very busy," Galor muttered as he returned to the window. "Hello Erestor!"

"Good morning Galor."

"Did you go chasing after your mother's beast again? Your hair is wet . . ." Galor grabbed a bit of Glorfindel's hair and waved it about to emphasize his point.

Erestor laughed. "I swam by choice this morning."

Glorfindel looked from Erestor to Galor and back again. He tugged his hair out of Galor's grasp. "After you return the books, go home and fetch the sword I left for you. Meet me in my courtyard," he paused, "if you have time."

"I have nothing else to do until midday. When would you like me?" Erestor asked.

Anticipation destroyed Glorfindel's better judgment. "Immediately," he said.

Erestor's brow furrowed for a moment and then he adopted the pose of one of Glorfindel's lesser guards, as much as he was able with his pile of books clutched to his chest and the look of bewilderment on his face. "I'll hurry then, my lord."

If Glorfindel leaned out any farther he'd fall to the ground. "I will see you in an hour?"

Erestor waved as he turned back toward the palace. "An hour it is – let me change and I'll be back."

"You cannot imagine how hard it was to slip unseen into the Fountain house to leave those things and you have done nothing but ignore them since your return. Shall I tell Maeglin that you are busy the rest of the day?" Galor returned to the desk and gathered the papers he had strewn there.

Reluctantly, Glorfindel turned from the window. "If you would, I think it is time that Erestor learned the story of his grandfather's sword."

"I will never understand why you did not pass it on to Ecthelion. That story does not concern you."

No, the story did not concern Glorfindel, but neither had he told Galor all the details.

Galor continued, "Glorfindel, there are others who . . ."

"I prefer to teach him – there are stories contained in the sword, he needs to know his history and Ecthelion is reluctant to teach him. Maeglin can wait, don't you think?" Glorfindel said absently and sat upon the windowsill. Something just happened, he thought. Something he had not felt before – but his well schooled mind rushed to return to its orderly thoughts and the only trace remaining was a bruise-like ache in the place where, in the moments before he leaned out the window, only sorrow had rested.

*

The gardens of Glorfindel's house crowded the outer walls of the structure. His courtyard was sparse compared to the wild confusion of plantings along the perimeter. The Fountain's courtyard was filled with plants for healing and pools for divination – the Golden Flower's central space was cleared for private practice with swords and other weapons. The paving stones were smooth and carefully fitted so that the footing would not encumber movement. Glorfindel paced the worn stones as he waited for Erestor to meet him.

Glorfindel blamed the battle for the mad jumble of his thoughts. The battle and sorrow and trying to return to a peaceful life – he wanted _something_, something other than waiting, for that was what he felt he was doing, waiting – but for what? If he could name his desire he could tame it or sate it. He had lived so long without want for anything that his sudden and nameless longing seemed like a ravenous creature that threatened to destroy every wall he had carefully crafted, a force that could tear down his house. He thought of the dragon winding its way through the armies and almost called Galor so that he would meet Erestor at the door and send him back out into the safe city until Glorfindel could organize his thoughts. But Erestor had waited long enough to hear the origin of his gift.

As if thoughts could call spirits into being, Glorfindel turned and saw Erestor standing in the shadow of the portico.

Glorfindel stopped moving. "When did you arrive?"

"Just now."

The sword hung from Erestor's belt, the old Fountain lord's jewel gleaming at the hilt.

"Your sword has a story," Glorfindel said.

"I have waited for you to tell me. I knew that you would come home after all your talk of dying and instructions to take over our two Houses. Glorfindel, you will always come home."

"I will," Glorfindel agreed, but silently he thought, to what?

Erestor did not move from the shadows of the porch. "What will you tell me?"

Glorfindel motioned him forward and said, "You history and your future. You must learn to protect yourself, though your hands were made to write. Come here that I may see them."

In the distance the bells started ringing out the hour from every corner of the city and Erestor walked toward Glorfindel with his hands offered out before him like two perfectly carved symbols of strength, but strength of different sort. And Glorfindel could not help but think that all would be well as long as Erestor's hands stayed warm and knowledgeable and true.

"Tell me about the sword," Erestor said as he neared the center of the courtyard.

Without thinking, Glorfindel reached out and traced the smooth lines of Erestor's palms and that was the first time their futures mingled.

"Sit here with me and I will tell you what I know – but I give no promise that your questions will be answered."

They knelt on the warm paving stones. Erestor placed the sword gently on the ground between them, the stone at the hilt a dark mirror in color and brilliance to the color of his eyes. The stone contained the sort of darkness that was not at odds with the light.

"The book you left gave no mention of the sword. I did not worry Idril for the history you promised in your note, but first tell me how she came to know the journey of my grandfather's blade when my father thought it lost."

"So Ecthelion has seen it?"

"I showed it to him the morning after your return from the battle."

"He said nothing to me about the matter and I was reluctant to ask."

They stared at the sword as if it were a third party to the conversation, as if it might – at any moment – contribute a seed of wisdom, a nearly forgotten memory of its journey across the sea.

Glorfindel glanced up to Erestor and back to the sword. "I concealed the sword before Ecthelion came to his senses as we made the journey here. I had gone in search of him at Alda's bidding, riding against the tide, searching every face I encountered along the march, asking for news of him. We are of a similar age and shared many happy days together in our early life, but we did not know each other as we do now until I found him kneeling beside his horse in the rear of the crowd.

"I searched until I reached the end of the line and I had almost given up hope until I heard his horse call out to me. I hurried past a bend in the path and found Ecthelion lying still as dawn in the dust. The land had never experienced so many feet crossing its surface at once and the road was white from trodden sand and crumpled root. I thought him dead, but when I knelt over him I felt the ready warmth of the living and his spirit seemed close to me. Honestly, I had no gauge to measure death before that time, so it was easy for me to leap to conclusions.

"I tried to rouse him with a thousand questions: Why are you not with us? Where have you been? If I lift you can you steady yourself enough to ride? He did not speak, but his eyes opened a fraction, enough for me to see that he wished to say something but he could not – and not for any trouble with his voice. His eyes had seen something and he could not give words to the vision, so I did not press. I grasped his shoulder and pulled him up so that we sat together in the dust and we remained there, just sitting, so long that a secret part of me wished that everyone had gone on without us and we would have no choice but to turn back."

Glorfindel became lost in his memories and Erestor searched his face. "Glorfindel," he said, "if you could go back to that day would you have carried on, knowing what you know now, or pulled my father back to his horse and turned the other way?"

"I cannot say for certain what I wish." Glorfindel seemed once more in the present, in the bright stone warmth of the courtyard with the bird song and the quiet lapping of the pool behind them. "We were not created to reverse time; we are meant to keep it dear to us and move on."

"Now you are speaking like the advisors in the palace. I expect more from you. What happened next?"

Glorfindel laughed at Erestor's tenacity. They could be speaking of the first music of the Ainur and Erestor would wish to hurry the story along to better catalog the pertinent facts. "Something very strange happened, the reason, perhaps, that I placed Ecthelion on his horse and hurried to catch the others despite my misgivings. He had closed his eyes and seemed to drift away from me. Dismayed, I looked around hoping that I might find someone to help us. My eyes had adjusted by that time to the perpetual darkness, my House was never known for its sight, and I noticed a figure beneath the dim outline of a massive tree along the path. I needed hands to help me so I called out and rose to see who lingered there with us and why, whoever it was, had not already offered assistance.

"I could not make out the stranger's face – and stranger he was to me, though I thought I knew everyone or I could, at least, give a name, a history, to every face that traveled with us. I did not know him, but I felt that I remembered him, hooded and hidden, from a distant memory.

" 'Take this,' he said and pushed the sword, this sword," Glorfindel's hand hovered above the hilt, "into my arms.

" ' Take this and give it to the one that will use the sword to write your story in the blood of his fathers.' Two ravens, eyes bright in the shadows, sat on the branch above him. I stared at him stupidly, too much had happened already. Ecthelion sat on the ground behind me, the sword felt clumsy in my arms. The stone matched the crows' eyes and I knew the design and the owner, your grandfather. The figure turned and the crows flapped their wings to follow him.

"'Wait,' I said. 'The sword belongs to the Fountain. I am confused.'

"I felt the stranger's sorrow, saw it in his bearing, 'You are misled,' he said, 'but I will tell you more when next we meet. Know your task by the stone and guard your secret until the end.'

"The figure disappeared into the darkness and I stood there waiting for him to return, to say more, until I could wait no longer if I hoped to catch up with the others. I hid the sword amongst my things and pressed Ecthelion to mount his horse. We rode together silently, swiftly, my mind occupied with words I could not comprehend. The rest I wrote in the book that was left for you. I can only assume that this is the end – the sword is yours, I have no question."

Erestor leaned back and stretched his legs. He looked up at the summer sky. "You were right, the story explains nothing."

Glorfindel shrugged. "The sword was clearly not intended for your father. You see now why I kept it hidden. "

"Who was the figure hidden in the cloak?"

"I can only guess." Glorfindel had guessed and counted himself lucky that he was not at the head of the march. The warm courtyard in Gondolin seemed so far removed from the wicked darkness of those first days that the story could have happened to another. Glorfindel's gaze moved inexplicably to the lovely curve of Erestor's neck and he lost himself there for a moment before he stood up suddenly. "Are you ready for your first lesson?"

"Need you ask?" Erestor reached out his hand for Glorfindel to help him up.

Again their futures met and mingled and Glorfindel could not help but think that the secret had nothing to do with the sword. His time with Erestor did not feel like an end, instead it felt like a beginning.


	5. Tarnin Austa

Levade: Your patience knows no bounds and you are a beautiful beta. Thank you!

Chapter Five: Tarnin Austa

"Some held that it came of love itself, and of the freedom of each fëa, and was a mystery of the nature of the Children of Eru." -from _Laws and Customs of the Eldar_

Gondolin changed gradually, slowly, like the seasons. Glorfindel watched his vines; Erestor watched the trees in his mother's garden, and they were both mesmerized by the myriad ways that nature marked its progress – one day green and growing, the next day brown and sleeping. Erestor progressed equally slowly in his weekly lessons with Glorfindel; they spent more time talking than learning the intricate movements required for Erestor to learn the art of combat.

Yet Erestor learned what he could and Glorfindel allowed his own thoughts to dissolve into the quiet memory of routine. The distance of time from the battle took Glorfindel's mind away from the piercing immediacy of his desires. He gave his passions to his vines and whispered secrets to the grapes, sunlight filtering through the thin vines into the vault of the warm soil, storing his footprints. The wine held the record of Glorfindel's days.

Years passed as they both went about their quiet, daily practices. Gondolin was thrown into an uproar with the arrival of Tuor and the human's steady courtship of the king's daughter, yet very few of them disapproved, and none loudly. Tuor's coming filled the jagged cracks of their grief, and Tuor's love eased the pained madness in Turgon's eyes. The city walls and their fastidious guards secured the rest.

The elves of Gondolin marked time by the feast of Tarnin Austa, they had little need for calendars otherwise, but the feast was a night of remembering and proof that Arda turned and turned, and would go on turning despite losses, just as the sun rose on the morning of mid-summer.

And so it was that Glorfindel remembered something from the piercing madness he'd endured after his return to the city. It returned to him like a misplaced key, dropped in a familiar crevice – the last place he should look, and also the first.

This night was Glorfindel's favorite of the year. He dressed carefully and walked along the city streets with Galor until they arrived and parted ways at the massive doors of Turgon's palace. The doors were flanked by pale, but skillful, reproductions of the trees that held the memory and light of their old home. Glorfindel wandered by himself for a while; the palace was handsomely decorated for the feast, vines and flowers spilled from every corner. Glorfindel could not see where the walls ended and the gardens began. The air, both inside and out, smelled of green – as it only did in a Gondolin summer. The city was fertile, overflowing with its abundance, and Glorfindel felt inordinately fortunate to be there, to have made it so far in their broken journey, while so many had not.

He hid behind a potted tree and occupied himself from this secret vantage by watching those arriving for the feast. He could see quite clearly down the hall, but no one could see him.

In the shadows of the vines, at the base of a column, no one sought him out. He watched guests as they passed, and he listened to their words, guessed the speaker's next thoughts, wondered what they desired. If he peered between two branches, Glorfindel could see the sky beyond the opened doors of a balcony and spread out across the sky, the faint, early evening stars. The stars were matched by gems, silver and gold from the necklaces and swords that caught the light from the candles and lamps throughout the hall. There was a glint of brightness on all who, unknowingly, passed by Glorfindel. He noted Ecthelion and Alda entering the hall and going straight away to pay their respects to the king and Eärendil, now six years old and able to pick out the differences in grapes when Idril brought him to visit the vineyards, though his small hands preferred the waters of the city's clear fountains.

Glorfindel would go see them all soon, but for now, a sweet breeze blew from the balcony.

Glorfindel missed the sea. He imagined the vale beyond the city wall to be an expanse of water. The encircling mountains were islands in shadow. Closing his eyes, Glorfindel could believe that the mountain wind held the sweet thickness of salt, a scent he remembered from his youngest days in the distant land that was now closed to them all. The journey to this place, this safe enclosure in the mountains, had taken so long.

"I've forgotten something," Glorfindel whispered to himself.

He pushed away from the wall and started to make his way toward Ecthelion. Still caught up in the questions of loss, the details and the sharpness of the night seemed to fade. Glorfindel made his way to the other side of the enormous hall, but he did not hurry. Those who passed by him smiled, inclined their head in greeting, and Glorfindel returned each gesture, but he did not encourage further conversation.

He was about to make a decision, but he did not know what choices he was given – this or that. If he'd been in another mood, if he had not stopped to look at the stars, if the mountains had not reminded him of the sea, things might have gone differently; Glorfindel could have toiled through the upcoming year in the same manner he'd worked through the others, carefully noting everyone else's desires.

Glorfindel was almost to Ecthelion when he, Alda and Turgon turned to see someone who approached behind Glorfindel's shoulder, and Glorfindel turned to see for himself who it was that caught their attention.

_It has to be some stranger_, Glorfindel thought, a distant lord who made it through The Pass, past Ecthelion's guard, his own guard and Turgon's gates. This city saw its share of unusual visitors, though it was said to be closed. He could not place him, not right away, but when Glorfindel's heart seemed to pull, the strangest sensation, it all came rushing back.

Glorfindel raised his eyes to the ceiling and laughed, loudly, stupidly, at his own foolishness. The stranger was Erestor, and he was dark and beautiful as he moved toward them, through the crowd, the music and the murmurs in the hall.

Ecthelion laughed too, out of habit, as he bent to whisper something in Alda's ear, all the while watching Erestor approach with an expression of joyous pride.

"Erestor," Glorfindel said, as the well-known stranger came close.

Erestor touched his arm. "If you're laughing at me, I will go back to my house and waste the vigil reading. It was my mother's doing. She said it was time that I took my position seriously and then she tortured me the better part of the afternoon."

"No – it's not that," Glorfindel grew quickly serious, tripping over his words. "I didn't recognize you, and then I remembered something that I had forgotten, and it was a series of things that made me laugh, not you." He'd never seen his young friend like this, black hair gleaming in the candlelight. His dark eyes shining; he was beautiful in his rich fabrics. Erestor was carefully arrayed in the finest jewels of his house, the sword at his side. The mouse had become the heir to his house in a matter of hours.

Erestor frowned, and tugged his sleeve. "You look like you've seen a spirit."

Glorfindel wondered suddenly whether it was possible to witness future memories in reverse, like Alda's visions, recollections flowing backward. He felt both doomed and enlightened. If Erestor was a horse, he would know what to do with him, the language he should speak with space and gesture. As it was, he could only utter half truths, concealed in jest. "You smell very nice," Glorfindel said, and forced a smile.

Erestor laughed, and looked at him curiously. "You're supposed to protect me from the sorceress, not admire her handiwork."

"But you clean up so nicely," Glorfindel said, brightly. It was impossible to speak with any real feeling, so their conversation was forced, stilted.

"Saying that I will not speak to you all night doesn't hold much meaning during the vigil, you'd agree?" Erestor leaned closely, conspiratorially. The bright clasp of his cloak belonged to his grandfather. His hand rose up toward Glorfindel's face, and there was the ring on his lovely fingers. Glorfindel caught the hand before it came too close, but found it difficult to release.

"You're acting so strangely," Erestor said, as his attention drifted to Ecthelion motioning them closer. "We should find wine, immediately."

Glorfindel followed him over to the others and was relieved as Alda pulled him to her for an embrace. At the time, Glorfindel knew nothing, but this what he later learned from Erestor:

When Alda saw them together, she viewed a bright cord, brilliant in its light, that stretched between them and pulled them close. She saw them together in a different place; a dark and rocky hillside, and the feast seemed to fade from view. Knowing no other explanation, in the half-truth way of premonition, Alda assumed the cord would bind them together when everyone else had long passed.

Certain that Glorfindel's strength would see to her son's safety when there were none left to guide him, she pulled Glorfindel to her in that midsummer feast and whispered in his ear. "Do you see Erestor?"

Glorfindel pulled back and searched her face. "I didn't recognize him when he first entered."

"He outshines us all," she said.

They both turned to look at Erestor beside his father. "He seems an old lord from ages past, from our old home," Glorfindel said. "Such a transformation you wrought in an afternoon. How did you pull him away from his scrolls?"

"I told him he would displease Idril if he did not make an effort."

Erestor turned toward them both and smiled. Glorfindel looked away quickly.

"You're uncharacteristically quiet tonight," Alda said, watching Glorfindel look at everything but Erestor.

"The air has changed."

Alda studied him, but Glorfindel would not turn toward her. "The breeze smells of the sea. Perhaps it carries some word to us?"

"If so, it is a private message because I cannot hear it," Glorfindel said. So many were coming now to greet Erestor, who had little clue what to do with the attention. "Erestor is the perfect mixture of you and Ecthelion."

"Erestor is his own creature," Alda replied. "I tell him that he was formed from my longing. He has not his father's desire for war, nor yours, Glorfindel."

"I was hardened to the sight of blood by circumstance, not nature. My skill with weapons came as a great surprise after my earlier failures. Erestor has the luxury of choice; we can thank our city for that. Even so, he needs to ride more and practice more."

Alda frowned. "There's time enough for that, if not here, then elsewhere. Experience is the most useful teacher. Erestor must first fill his mind so he can carry our libraries with him and compose our songs."

"There will be songs composed for him after this night," Glorfindel said, without thinking.

Alda laughed, a deep, rich sound with no artifice. "I think it would please him greatly if yours was the first." The cord glowed faintly. It was done.

And so it was.

"I will go find my seat," Glorfindel said, and hurried away.

The lord of the Golden Flower endured the rest of the feast with restless unease. He sat beside Galor and did his duty with a full cup, distracting himself with the stories that the wines told his mouth: their struggles and their soils and their histories. He did not, no matter how much he wished otherwise, look at Erestor.

Glorfindel left the feast early and returned to his quarters. Soon the rooms would be filled with smaller parties of gathering guests, weaving from house to house, some lingering and spending the hours of silence together when the bells tolled the beginning of the vigil.

Glorfindel stood in the throughway and stared upward at his empty house, lit from top to bottom in anticipation of the visitors it would welcome that night. He remembered when they all first came to Gondolin, the careful sketches Galor offered for his approval as the house grew, a living thing, rock placed atop rock, until the structure stood as if it had always been there, the spirits of the rooms waiting for their hands to offer them solid composition and shape, like a seed growing to full flower in the miniscule crack of a rock.

As he contemplated the house, Glorfindel imagined himself, incorporeal, weightless, wandering from room to room, as if he were searching for a wall that they had forgotten to construct, a corner that had been neglected. It was the most peculiar sensation.

Eventually, he walked up the front steps and allowed himself to follow his imagined path, from the entrance hall to the kitchens – it was strange to find the cavernous room empty, but everything prepared in advance and laid out on the stone slabs as if the occupants had been removed suddenly in the middle of their work – and then on to the upper floors. Glorfindel found himself peering in dark corners as if he might find something there he'd forgotten.

He stared at a sketch of his mother, another painstaking recreation of Galor's hanging above a small table in a seldom used bedroom on the upper floor, for so long that Glorfindel became alarmed when he realized that he had been hearing the echo of voices coming from below for a long while without acknowledging the sound as the arrival of his guests.

The main stair of the Golden Flower abode led directly to the entrance, spilling down the upper galleries like water. The front hall was much smaller than the echoing rooms of Turgon's palace, which gave Glorfindel no chance to escape as he descended the stairs at the exact moment Erestor arrived at the door. Glorfindel almost turned and retraced his steps back to the sketch of his mother. Instead, he gathered his courage, nodded in greeting and immediately turned to go in search of Galor.

Erestor followed.

"Why did you leave early?" Erestor asked.

"I wanted to come here before all the rooms were crowded." And the rooms were crowded already, but everyone was involved in other conversation, greeting Glorfindel and returning to their drowsy arguments and laughter. Glorfindel thought he might be a ghost, as present as he seemed in his own house.

"You usually like crowds. Maeglin made a spectacle of himself, you should regret that you were not there to see it."

"That's not surprising," Glorfindel said, and took a seat on a couch as Erestor dropped down beside him, all limbs and uncomfortable grace. "Why are you not with your family?"

"We're back to that again. Were you always this maddening? Last Tarnin Austa, we walked the quiet city together and we looked at things and you found it difficult to not speak. This is our habit. Would you rather I not be here?" Erestor seemed fully perplexed.

"No." Glorfindel felt an unbelievable sadness at the thought of Erestor leaving. "No, not at all."

"Then tell me what troubles you. You have not danced, you have not sang, you have not spoken. You've sat and thought all night." Erestor briefly stood, carefully removed the clasp from his cloak and tossed the garment to the side. When he returned to his unstudied lounging, a formal layer removed, he seemed more the Erestor Glorfindel knew, but his richness still shone. His black hair brushed Glorfindel's arm, and Glorfindel quickly pulled his arm away from the slight touch. He wanted Erestor to leave and he also wanted him to stay. He could tell no one of this shameful longing, not Alda or Galor; Ecthelion was out of the question. As for Erestor, he could sense untruth the way many sensed an approaching storm.

"Some strange music has caught me," Glorfindel said.

"Did you discuss this with my mother?"

"In part."

Erestor considered this. "What was her advice?"

"She said I should compose a song."

"Gorfindel, that would be a first," Erestor exclaimed. Then he leaned closer and whispered, "Would you like for me to write it for you?"

"Not all of us are as skilled at that sort of thing as you Fountain sorts." Glorfindel felt himself relax a bit. Here was his friend, if he were fortunate this desire would pass, whatever it was, and he would be able to keep Erestor close to him, as he had always been.

"It's strange to see you pensive; let me bring you wine," Erestor said, and rose again. He was always in motion. He never sat anywhere for long.

Glorfindel watched him move across the room and he realized that he could watch Erestor for a morning, a week, a year, an age. He would never tire of watching him. Gondolin was beautiful, the city's inhabitants were beautiful – yet Erestor made all that various beauty seem tarnished and worn. Glorfindel sighed, closed his eyes and pressed his head back against the couch. _This is dreadful_, he thought, _Maeglin's desire for Idril, worn so fiercely that none could miss it, is more acceptable than what I want_.

He could be sent away from the city for his thoughts. His House would ruined, but worse of all, Erestor would shrink in horror away from him. He laughed to himself as he thought of asking Maeglin for work in the mines.

Erestor returned too quickly, and not quickly enough. He sat close and placed a cup in Glorfindel's outstretched hand. Erestor's cheeks were already flushed with strong wine; he spoke more rapidly than usual, quietly, "The time will soon be upon us. May I stay with you until morning and walk with you to the walls?"

"Are there no other young lords with whom you wish to pass the night?" Glorfindel asked, instantly regretting his words.

Erestor seemed to consider this. "No, like my father, I prefer your company."

"Your father is with others of his House tonight."

Erestor's worry quickly dissolved into genuine hurt. "Do you really wish for me to leave?"

Glorfindel had no choice but to look at him closely. "Of course not. Never." Erestor didn't seem convinced, so Glorfindel took his hand and continued, "Listen, my mouse, I simply want you to live."

That seemed to cheer Erestor a bit.

"The bells will ring soon," Glorfindel continued. "Let us rise and enjoy the evening. Stay near to my side and we will be silent together through the night. At dawn, we will go to the wall together, always near, as I promised you long ago."

Erestor nodded, but it was obvious he sensed Glorfindel's deeper mistrust. "You've changed from moment to moment this night."

"I do not mean to."

"You've spoken to no one and soon we will not be able to speak at all." Erestor looked about the room. "Let's salvage what we can before the bells ring."

And so they did. They laughed and danced and spoke – more often to each other – until the time neared for the first bells to ring out. They'd planned their path, deciding before the hour was marked that they would pass the vigil together exploring the city in silence until they made their way to the eastern wall at dawn.

As they left the house, their route took them past the North Gate. Glorfindel's presence brought the guards to attention. He felt sorry for the poor souls on duty through the night, but Glorfindel had paid his price in the early years of the city when he was an untried and fatherless lord. It was a simple matter to gain respect from his House, the Golden Flower was known for its kindness, its fairness.

Erestor trailed behind Glorfindel as they walked, the dark richness of his clothing blending into the shadows, silver and diamonds glowing in the moon's light. He seemed to be growing accustomed to the decorated sword at his side, and Glorfindel smiled as he thought of their lessons. Not content with the night, his thoughts moved forward to the next day, and all the things he might teach Erestor.

The vigil began with the ringing of a heavy bell in Turgon's tower.

"Peace be with you this night," Erestor said, unfathomably – it was not their custom – before the last peal finished sounding.

It was commonly believed that Tarnin Austa offered a new beginning. The silent vigil was a time for reflection where one could remember the past and compare their troubles to the hope of future brightness. Erestor was too young for troubles, or so Glorfindel thought – he had not considered the phantoms of an overactive mind – but he honored the solemnity of the occasions when many of those born within the guarded walls did not. Erestor understood their history; he read of their mistakes, of their regrets; he understood their need for secrecy in this place, and their longing for their old home. He had been born with this understanding, so the night seemed to be made for him.

Past the North Gate, they walked the crooked path to the Square of Folkwell, the only place in the city that reminded Glorfindel of the gardens of his younger years. With secret words, the old oaks in the square thrived and grew as high as the city walls. Leafed in midsummer green, their boughs were hung with colored lanterns. Few Elves were out this long night. Low music from surrounding houses filled the grove. The lanterns glimmered against Erestor's face, catching his dark eyes like a prism.

Erestor wandered over to the foot of his favorite tree and motioned for Glorfindel to sit beside him.

It was impossible to make any distance between them, though Glorfindel tried. Erestor drew closer. They sat there quietly, staring out through the leafy enclosure toward the carefully kept lawn until Glorfindel felt something tapping on his knee, a soft beat that echoed the low melody traveling from a house across the square.

He glanced up to find a wry smile on Erestor's face and could do nothing but sit very rigidly, uncertain and perplexed, unable to breathe until Erestor removed his finger. Certain he had Glorfindel's full attention, Erestor shook his head as if to say, _How strange you are tonight_, and brought the same finger up between them to bid Glorfindel to wait and watch.

Erestor closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the tree's smooth bark and inhaled deeply, held it, as if he could capture the spirit of the long night by stealing the fragrant air and not letting it go. Then he cupped one hand to his mouth and spoke silent words into the curved shell of his palm. Glorfindel watched his dark lashes above the sharp angle of his cheek – the moment was caught, suspended – until Erestor closed his fingers tightly, suddenly, as if something might escape. His opened eyes and smiled, greatly pleased with his success, as he dropped his fist to rest again on Glorfindel's knee.

Glorfindel was too intrigued to be bothered by the touch this time. He waited to see what would happen.

Opening his fingers slowly, one by one, Erestor revealed a blue light glowing at the center of his hand. The light was very faint, and could not be seen at all if their eyes were not fully accustomed to the dark shadows beneath the oak. Glorfindel knew this small magic, though he hadn't the skill to try it himself. It was the shape of words, the presence of them, Alda's strange power born of her kind's wisdom and the sea. The ephemeral object was the sort of thing one might give a child that would not sleep when all the songs have been exhausted, or a gift to someone very close – a wish.

Erestor passed the blue light to Glorfindel's hand, where it pulsed warmly. It was as if Glorfindel held a piece of Erestor. It was, in a way, like touching Erestor's heart.

_I wish_, Glorfindel thought, _that you will always be safe_.

The light flowed upward, through the trees and came to rest amongst the lanterns. They tilted their heads and watched the glow shift in vibrancy from blue to violet between the boughs until a mist spread out from its core and dispersed the light into a wispy fog that vanished toward the night sky.

Erestor's joy was uncontainable. He covered his mouth so that his smile wouldn't spill into speech. He was thrilled at his creation and seemed to take it as a sign that Glorfindel's earlier mood was vanquished, that he was a welcome companion this night, for the root of the gift could only find success when the recipient shared a deep connection with its maker.

Glorfindel's shame lifted a fraction as he watched Erestor's joy. He still felt desire, stronger than before, if were possible, but there was something else beneath it. Glorfindel needed time to examine this thing, whatever it was, to find the correct word for it. He adored Erestor: his hair, his voice, his peculiar expression when he focused all his energy on a thought. He not only adored the young, brilliant lord dressed in his finest, he adored the simply dressed scholar that often forgot to brush his hair when he was following a story that needed to be finished.

Before he could stop himself, Glorfindel reached out and touched Erestor's cheek and he told himself that he did this because he couldn't use his voice to thank Erestor properly for the gift. Erestor leaned into his touch. The grass beneath them was a comfortable carpet where they sat for some time, shoulder to shoulder, in silence beneath the oak.

Trapped within their separate thoughts, they eventually rose and spent the rest of the night wandering the quiet streets of the city. As they passed the Arch of Inwë, Glorfindel fell back to allow Erestor to lead them where he wished. He did not take the direct path to the southern wall, but followed the King's Way, slipping through alleys to bypass the Square. When they arrived at the Way of Running Waters, Glorfindel realized that Erestor had purposefully led them in a winding route that bypassed all the Fountain residences.

Erestor sat on the edge of an actual fountain, another of his favorites, the bright enameled tiles glittering in the depths. The structure was not large and was erected some distance from the main fountains in this place. The water in the pool seemed removed, distracted, and the fountain itself seemed misplaced, as if the builders could not find a proper setting for it – so they simply put it in the next available space, removed from its cousins.

Glorfindel had few options when it came to joining Erestor so he rested on the edge of the cool tiles near Erestor, facing him. Something shifted in those hours before dawn, the air seemed charged, fragile, as if it could break, the same feeling Glorfindel had as a storm formed beyond the encircling mountains. Tarnin Austa always brought change, for the world could crumble in the morning and the night knew no regrets. And things that were remembered during the vigil could be forgiven as dawn broke.

Erestor's skin was pale against his dark clothing. When Glorfindel looked closely, he saw that his black hair was burnished in red, here and there. Like the shadows, Erestor was stitched together from light and dark, by a thousand variations and pieces.

Glorfindel began to work through those pieces, finding mysteries he had not expected, but it was hard to meet Erestor's eyes. Of all the things the chief of the Golden Flower had endured to reach the city, to build it, to protect it – he was terrified of only this – Erestor's eyes, and the story he might find there.

Erestor, sensing this, put his hands to either side of Glorfindel's face and gently, in the flickering reflections of the fountain, drew their gazes together.

But something happened before Glorfindel could look away, or rise up, or warn Erestor to leave him be with a glance. Or drown in black ink. Something was about to happen, and neither of them would remember until the end of their days, for such is the way of Tarnin Austa.

Every so often, in the silence of the vigil, the spirit of summer would come to one, or a few: the very brave or the ill-fated, or those whose time would do some good for many. The spirit would visit unlucky lovers, or those whose sadness was too great to bear, and she brought with her many stories, all true. Her gift was the secret cure for despair.

If just one in the city were to break the silence of the vigil, the spell would disperse and summer would flee – perhaps that was why she came so rarely. If the silence was honored, summer was free to speak in her own language, to tell her secrets. This spirit, for her richness, knew the birth of spring and the death of autumn; she was the vine that linked them. Summer held all memories, even the memories that had not became memories yet. In that way, she knew the future, but only the fragments of it that would be stored or cherished in some creature's heart. For good or ill, summer kept the things that shaped the borrowed lands of Arda.

As Glorfindel's gaze met Erestor's, summer came down from the treetops and sat beside the fountain with them. The rule of silence having been followed, and sunrise not too far away, she dipped her hand into the pool and lifted a cord from the water. The cord glowed brightly, but Glorfindel and Erestor did not see it. They saw nothing but each other.

Images came to them slowly, as if the thoughts traveled from some great distance, from the pool where all memories are kept. What they saw belonged to the spirit of summer. Glorfindel would be the first to remember this moment, a year in the future through the flames at the Christhorn. What seemed to take forever by the fountain would come back to him, all at once. He would remember then, see, and know in an instant that his story wasn't finished. But there would be no time to assure Erestor of this.

Erestor would try to rid his mind of all memories in the ages in to come, but in his heart there would be a resonance of what the spirit showed him that night when he was very young, sitting by a fountain with the only thing he would ever desire. The secret knowledge, the images he saw and immediately forgot, would give him hope, even if he was unaware of the source. The memories would force him to live, when he hoped that he would not.

Summer gave them this gift because she saw that they would soon love, and summer knew no rules, and had no reason to know their love was not allowed. She only saw that they would endure pain and death to keep it, and the dark one would fare the worse.

Their story was told to them in the hour before dawn, and they were lucky that no one stumbled upon them, for they were fixed like stone, staring, expressions shifting with their thoughts: wonder and pleasure, happiness and anguish, fear and desperation.

As their story drew to a close, the first light of dawn crept over the hillside. Beautiful peace crossed their faces, and it was here that they found each other again, the gorgeous song of Tarnin Austa rising from the voices along the eastern wall. The song of summer was thought to be the strangest, and most splendid, of all the music of their kind, a gift from Ilúvatar himself; a piece of Valinor that survived their crossing.

Within the deep mystery of the music, Erestor and Glorfindel slowly came back to the knowledge of where they sat, and the dawn light gently spreading across the grass-veined, stone pavement. Of whom they watched, they did not need to come to full awareness to know – for the hour had been filled with stories of each other, and some magic lingered as they approached complete wakefulness. What wonderful and dreadful things they would accomplish together, or if not together, then because of their love. Erestor's eyes were wet, but a smile formed, just barely, at the corners of his mouth. Glorfindel's eyes seemed to be too-bright in his knowledge, in the certainty of their path.

As the sun's brightness fully crested the eastern wall, other voices in the city begin to join in the singing. The fountains seemed to lose their nighttime hush. Erestor bit his lip and glanced over his shoulder, looking around as if he might find a stranger there, or something he had lost.

Glorfindel stretched his legs, stood, and began to stroll around the small square as if the answer to their lost hour waited in the dark pools of the other fountains. Erestor gestured to his own mouth, asking permission to speak, but Glorfindel stared toward the distant wall and the sunrise and it took some time for him to notice.

He glanced toward Erestor with a start. "Of course. Yes, we can speak now."

"Good." Erestor whispered all the same. "What just occurred?"

Glorfindel returned to their seat by the fountain and stared at his boots. "I have absolutely no idea. It was dark. You and I left the grove, we walked around the city, it was an hour or so until dawn. I followed you here. Now it's morning."

"That is all I remember."

"What's the last thing you recall?" Glorfindel asked.

"Your eyes," Erestor said, seeking out his last memories, and quickly looking away once he found them.

_I will have him_, Glorfindel thought, though he did not know from where this new and shameless resolve stemmed. _I will have ever piece of him. But he will come to me first, or not at all_. If Erestor approached him, he would feel no guilt; he would not have to live with the knowledge that he'd tempted Erestor into something he did not want. If they were meant to come together, if Erestor felt the same of his own accord, the laws would have no bearing.

"I feel very strange," Erestor said. "Like I've misplaced something."

"We lost an hour, of that I'm sure."

"Glorfindel," Erestor said, his voice quite serious.

"What is it?"

"Why did I have to chase your attention this night?" Neither had ever missed seeing the sunrise with all the others on this day, not Glorfindel since the city was only foundation and heaps of stone, nor Erestor since he was born. There seemed little use to join them now. "Have I offended you in some way? I had no intention to do so. I've turned my actions around, looked at them from every angle I can imagine, yet I cannot find where this distance" – he moved his hands between them, as if he measured the space –"came about. You have been my teacher and my protector, but the role I treasure most in you is my friend. My dearest friend. It's always been this way."

Glorfindel could think of no honest answer to give him. Erestor would sense a half-truth and worry all the more. Nor could he disclose his true thoughts.

"I will never leave your side," Glorfindel said after a time. "Wherever you go in this city, or later still beyond these walls – if Turgon ever opens the gates – I will haunt your steps like your mother's favorite hound. You've never displeased me, save in your lessons." They both smiled at this. "Through light and dark, I will be close to you, watching. If you ever need me, call, and I will cross any distance to find you. I'm singly yours, Erestor, and I have been since before your fëa found your beautiful body in this place. Truer words have never left my mouth."

"Do you swear an oath to me?"

"I swear on all I hold dear." _Which is you_, Glorfindel thought.

"I see." Erestor toyed with the hilt of the sword he still wore at his side. He'd grown more accustomed to its weight throughout the night. "Then why . . ."

"Stop asking questions to which you know the answer."

"But I . . ."

"I said for you to leave it alone!"

Erestor nodded.

And Glorfindel stood. "I will see you at your father's house tonight. Make good use of your day." Glorfindel did not look back as he walked quickly from the fountain and through a small, vine covered archway that led out into the street. Erestor's questions both infuriated him and made him fearful; his blood rose in strange hope. He'd never raised his voice to Erestor before, but Erestor knew better than to keep pressing – or he should know.

Glorfindel's shoulders rested a bit, the tension easier to bear now that he was away from him. Groups returned from the wall and the city became filled with sounds, more apparent for their long absence the night before. Many spoke in greeting as Glorfindel passed them in the street, a much loved lord, great in his kindness. _And_ _depraved_, he thought. How their smiles would fade if they knew he walked steadily homeward with the shine of Erestor's hair, the slope of his chin, the outline of his black lashes – fathomless eyes, all these images filling Glorfindel until he had no other duty, no other purpose than to think about Erestor. How could he work, filled with this madness?

Galor greeted Glorfindel at the door. "Good morning, Glorfindel, my great chief. Our king, Turgon – you might remember him – missed you, last night and this morning. Tuor requested special council – you and I, in his home, this night. I have no idea, meaning not the remotest knowledge, of what he wishes to discuss. Meaglin wishes for you to a approve a new shield design, he created it last night in the silence of the vigil, happily, for Idril's sake, he occupied himself with that task, though I asked for it last year at Tarnin Austa. Your steward would like leave for a week, his daughter is to be wed and he's requested that you officiate the ceremony. I've uncovered a few lost scrolls that might catch your interest; you may pass them along to Erestor when you're through with them. And your vineyard is showing signs of damage from the late spring frost."

"Galor, I haven't removed my cloak yet," Glorfindel said.

"Would you like help with that?"

Glorfindel stared at him.

"No, of course not," Galor continued. "Shall I find you in an hour?"

"That would be preferable."

"Good then, Ecthelion waits for you in the library." Galor took Glorfindel's cloak and vanished down the hall.


End file.
